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Garbage Collectors
- Lady Ronit
- Sep 11, 2024
- 9 min read
Updated: Oct 18, 2024
Between four and five in the morning, every day, not long after dawn, the streets of cities fill with the shadows of garbage collectors. Bandits, recidivists, refugees – they are not People. That's not how we see them. They are not even animals. They are something worse than Us. They are garbage collectors. We generally avoid contact with them. We are afraid to catch a common glance, even a shallow one, even for a moment. They are not People. They are garbage collectors, bandits, maybe prisoners on community service during rehabilitation? No matter what we think of them – these are not flattering thoughts. We avoid them like the plague, panicked and frightened, we avoid their gaze. We are afraid to approach them; we do not want to smell them. After all, they carry garbage, so they stink, it’s natural. We avoid them, but they are People. They are more like Us than Our Conscience allows Us to admit. Because We are better, in Our opinion. But it is not good to be the same as someone who sweeps the street or collects garbage from our estates in the morning. And these are just cleaners, moreover, so much like Us.
A few weeks ago, a pretty woman, in the company of her grandfather, was setting off early in the morning on a business trip. The head of the family did not spare ambitions toward his granddaughter. He decided to familiarize her with the mechanisms and ways of operating the family business. So the dressed-up miss got out of bed at dawn to accompany her grandfather on a business trip. As they got into the car, or actually just before they got up at 6:30, garbage collectors suddenly appeared at the walls of the family estate. Instead of like knights on white horses, on horseback, they drove into the street on a garbage truck and came out for the garbage. One of them, horror of horrors, as we could look for in these garbage collectors, after all, they are not People, these are commonly known facts, all values are against this, one of them seemed to her, to this spoiled miss, of course, quite human, quite handsome. Dark hair, exotic looks, a Moroccan, say no more. Let us simplify this humiliating statement in strict words, in the simplest, she liked him, regardless of all the differences between them. This had to be smothered, killed in the bud, before a single tactless look happened. She lowered her eyes to her shoes, beautifully polished Hermès, the most fashionable this season. Out of the corner of her eye, she registered the glances of both garbage collectors, who paid her, at 6:30 am, above-average attention. No wonder, normal course of things, they would not expect to see such a miss, and especially not after dawn, at 6:30 am. Although her peers fill nearby residences, they do not usually stand out on the street at dawn unless they happen to fall out of a limousine drunk. Though this usually happens behind gates.
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