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Trash Talk
By Lisa Singer

Historic Mt. Washington, located 15 minutes north of downtown, was founded in the middle of the 19th century as a summer retreat for prominent folks who wanted to escape the city's oppressive heat.

Known for its treed lots and diverse architecture, the neighborhood has modern homes and ivy-covered cottages tucked between large Victorian houses. It also has a driving range, rugby and soccer fields, two arboretums, shops and cafes and, just across the Jones Falls, a Whole Foods Market and the requisite Starbucks. Some residents boast that Olympian Michael Phelps trained at one of the community's two local pools.

For all that, Mt. Washington is charming . . . but it's boring. Sure, we have some burglaries and car thefts, but nothing out of the ordinary. (I must confess, though, that I saw a bagpipe-player practicing in full regalia while I was walking my dog early one morning.) So I was delighted to get a phone call from my neighbor, Susan, who had some big news.

"Lisa, there's a woman stuck in a garbage can in the alley."

"SHUT. UP."

"No, I'm serious. I saw her on the way back from walking the dogs. What should we do?"

"Let's call bulk trash," I suggest. Susan doesn't even laugh, but I'm pretty sure that's because she's a social worker.

I agree to meet her in the alley to scope out the situation. My idea of "scope out" means sneaking a peek from behind my garage, which is maybe 30 feet away from the visitor. But I see Susan walk toward the trashcan, kind of cowering. She stops seven or eight feet away from it. Inasmuch as she decided to approach the can, I'm not sure why she doesn't come closer, because this person – a man with a long ponytail, not a woman – is going nowhere. Fast.

I don't want to abandon my friend, so I advance from the other direction.

As trashcans go, this one is pretty decent. Shiny, galvanized steel, with corrugated sides to add strength which, since it's holding a human being, turns out to be a useful feature. Its lid is nowhere in sight.

The occupant is clad in jeans, a blue plaid flannel shirt and white leather sneakers. His head and shoulders are visible from the can's opening; his legs – from the knee down – are dangling off its rim. His ass and most of his torso, wedged into the barrel, are hidden from view. He's floppy, like a Raggedy Andy doll.

"Could you please help me?" he pleads. This is the first cry for help Susan and I have heard, which strikes me as exceedingly odd. If I were stuck in a garbage can, I'd be giving my vocal cords a workout.

Susan's face is the picture of earnestness as she asks the guy, "Do you have a gun?"

Really? What could the answer possibly be? "No," the veracity of which can't be proven until maybe it's too late, or, "Yes, and I'm going to murder you both as soon as you let me out of here"?

"I don't have a gun," he answers. "I'm just embarrassed."

Embarrassed? Reconsider your adjectives, Garbage Guy. "Embarrassed" seems grossly inadequate.

I ask a more sensible question, one I've wanted the answer to since I arrived on the scene. "How did you wind up in the garbage can?"

"I was trying to tie my shoe and I fell in," he answers.

I know next to nothing about physics, but his explanation makes no sense to me. No matter how I picture it, he would have had to enter head-first. To prove my point, I tried to replicate the scenario with my laundry hamper, which is somewhat less gross than a garbage can. Here's what I discovered: It takes intention to arrange one's body the way he did.

His account raises other questions, like why both of his shoes were tied. If he was trying to tie his shoe when he fell in, shouldn't one of them still be untied? Once he was in the can, his mobility was severely restricted; his hands may as well have been in Montana for all the good they were going to do his shoes.

And another thing: Why hadn't he tried to use momentum to rock back and forth until he knocked himself over? My husband theorizes that the poor fellow was afraid he'd end up rolling down the alley. I'd pay huge sums to see that.

As if to explain his predicament further, our captive says, "I live in Washington." Uh . . . that's nice, but what? You mistook Mt. Washington for Washington? The situation was starting to get awkward, so Susan and I tried to come up with a plan. I wanted to keep the victim in the can until the next day's trash pick-up, but remember, Susan is a social worker, and she vetoed my suggestion. In her professional opinion he was neither homeless nor ape-shit batty. I thought he was eccentric, a word that feels like home to me. Ultimately, that's the reason I decided to free him.

Carefully, I tilted the can forward until the man's feet touched ground. He wriggled out and then sidled down the alley, shaking off some residual stiffness as he walked. I'm pretty sure he didn't say anything, not even "thank you," which sort of made me regret having helped him out.

That night, I made a mental list of people I'd like to see trapped in a garbage can, waiting to be hauled away by city workers. (See ya, Mom.)

A week later, I was still obsessed with the incident. I was at the community soccer field with my dog; a neighbor who lives a few blocks away from me was there, too. I shared the garbage can story and was shocked by her response.

"That's so strange," she said. "About a year ago, there was a person who kept falling into the trashcans in our alley. It went on for, like, a month."

"SHUT. UP!"

Now I have to revise my hypothesis about the neighborhood. Mt. Washington is boring, except when it isn't.

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