Gary Lloyd
This time last year, I stumbled upon a YouTube video compilation of garbage trucks driving from home to home, snatching up cans and dumping garbage.
I was surprised that the video was nearly two hours long. I was stunned that it had been viewed more than four million times.
I quickly found out why: toddlers love them.
I expected our son to go through a phase of loving dump trucks, excavators and monster trucks. All boys do. But a 10-wheel truck full of forgotten lettuce, dozens of Chick-fil-A bags and thousands of flattened Amazon boxes is apparently mesmerizing.
Our three-year-old’s love for garbage trucks — regular garbage and recycling — hasn’t waned. He identifies parts of the truck and what those parts do. He has nine toy garbage cans and almost as many toy garbage trucks. He has played with them approximately 403 consecutive days. We tear up notebook paper and cardboard to use as recycling. For Christmas last year, Santa Claus brought a toddler-sized ride-on garbage truck to keep the sidewalks of Trussville spotless. He has a handful of garbage truck-themed shirts and one hat. It’s serious business.
Aside from the videos and toys, the real-life thing simply can’t be beaten. I point out garbage trucks on every drive. I have stopped atop Mary Taylor Road so that my son can peek inside the nearby landfill, and on more than one occasion I have driven to the Waste Management landfill in Moody as a field trip.
But the absolute best day of the week is Wednesday: pickup day. Our toddler’s listening skills magically intensify, and he believes he can hear that truck coming down Roper Road, even though we live closer to Argo than Moody. He wears one of his garbage shirts on pickup day. We’ve recorded dozens of iPhone videos of him waving to the garbage men (and them to him), cans lifting into the air and the front loader tossing all that waste into the back of the truck. I set one video to the song “Good Times Roll” by Jimmie Allen and Nelly, and it remains a favorite.
When Trussville switched from Republic Services to Amwaste last year, the move was met with confusion by our toddler. Why was there no longer a blue recycling truck and another blue regular garbage truck? Why did just one white truck come now? Why, at least for the first month or so, did Amwaste come on days other than Wednesday? It’s consistent now, and we see the same driver each week. He honks the horn, waves and gives thumbs-up to our son, and I swear he waits until he reaches our house to lift the front loader into the air to dump a full load.
Back in the spring, our son napped through garbage pickup one Wednesday. The following Wednesday, the truck didn’t come at all for the first time in months. The next morning, he heard it rumbling up the street. We spent much of the morning outside, watching it dump garbage at a dozen homes. When it made it to our house, the driver waved and leaned out the window. He pointed toward my son.
“I missed him yesterday.”
Gary Lloyd is the author of six books and a contributing writer to the Cahaba Sun.
