Ungrounded Outlet

My neighbors confuse me. They really do.

I live in a townhouse in an area that has city trash pickup. The guy I bought the house from, for some reason, painted his (now my) house number on his trashcan. It’s the only trashcan in my area that has the house number painted on it, but whatever. The trash collectors tend to just throw all of the empty trashcans into a pile so the number made it easy to pick my trashcan out from the sea of other trashcans. Having the same trashcan every day isn’t particularly important to me, but it’s a nice-to-have…I guess.

Anyway, I’ve recently started coming home from work pretty late so I’m usually the last person to take my empty trashcan back around. Actually, I’ve started coming home after dark and, because it’s REALLY dark back walking around behind the townhouses, I’ll usually just wait until Thursday morning to walk it back around. No big deal.

Sometimes, I don’t get my trashcan (the one with my house number painted on it). Since no other trashcans have numbers on them, it makes sense that other people aren’t checking and just grab one. Perfectly reasonable. Indeed, the trashcan I’ve been using this week hasn’t been mine.

But I don’t think it’s my trashcan anymore. My neighbors, two doors down, had set my trashcan out this morning. In red spray paint, they had crossed out my house number (though it’s still legible) and filled the side with multiple copies of their house number.

WTF? They stole my trashcan? Really? I mean…why? I don’t care about the trashcan (they’re welcome to have it if they really want it that badly); but now I’m incredibly curious about the people themselves. What was wrong with their existing trashcan? Did they go buy the paint just for this or did they have it lying around? Why did they do such a bad job of painting it? Did they want to steal a trashcan but not put any effort into it? Were they maybe trying to make a point that I shouldn’t have my house number stenciled on my trashcan? I’d buy that, but I’m not the one who did it; and they must know this since I moved in well after they did.

The whole thing just seems bizarre and weird. And I’m slightly scared that I’m going to start having some odd passive aggressive war with these guys. It started with the trashcan? What’s next? Personally, I want to live a quiet, non-confrontational life. So I’ll let them make the next move if they decide it’s necessary.

But if they really do want some strange suburban sitcom-style war, I’ll win. I hope it doesn’t come to that.