| Each week at my house, my boyfriend and I play a game--secretly, stealthily, without actually telling each other about it. We both pretend not to know the rules. We both pretend not to keep score. It happens all the same. The name of the game is “Bet I Can Make You Take the Trash Out.”
Do you know this game? I think it’s played in households across the country, but nobody seems to talk about it. It’s incredibly easy to play--but one of the important rules is that you’ve got to pretend not to know that you know how to play the game. It’s part of the strategy.
I’m sure there are different variations, but basically it goes something like this: the trash can gets pretty full, to the point where any normal person would just empty it and start over. But you don’t want to be the one who has to empty it, and that’s the object of the game. So you begin by rationalizing that you can fit just a little more trash into the pile before it really needs to be emptied. And then you take whatever piece of trash it is that you’re holding in your hand and you carefully insert it, like you’re playing a game Jenga in reverse, into the existing pile of refuse. Your plan is to make your trash contribution just insignificant enough that it will basically go unnoticed, but just significant enough to tilt the trash can weight & balance scales so that the next person who comes by with a piece of trash has no choice but to tip the can over the limit, and take out the trash. Voila!
I have gotten pretty good at this, I’m ashamed to admit. Trivial items like candy wrappers and wads of gum don’t even present a challenge to me these days; they can always fit in someplace. It’s the larger items, like cereal boxes and milk cartons, that you’ve got to get more creative with. Sometimes you can flatten them to just the right size so that they can slide down the side inconspicuously. Or perhaps you are talented enough to balance them just so on top, like a see-saw. In extreme cases, you may have to admit defeat and walk all the away over to another room, to another trash can that’s not quite so full, and hide the larger object in there. But you can never, ever cave in and be the sucker who actually takes the trash out.
Although this game is perpetual, it does come with a built-in time limit each week. Trash day is on Tuesday. So if, somehow, the weekend’s activities don’t finally push the limit and force a winner, we’ll call it a draw on Tuesday morning and my dear boyfriend, who has the dubious honor of being the last out of the house on Tuesday mornings, will take the week’s worth of trash out to the curb. (I suppose that’s not exactly a draw--it’s really more of a forfeit on his part, since he still does the dirty work. Heh heh heh.) And therein lies another of my secrets. If my work schedule ever changes, I might be forced to relinquish my title of Trash-Avoiding Champion. That must not be permitted--I have not studied and practiced years of trashogami to be thwarted by some paltry scheduling conflict. Therefore, I shall deftly defend my title and keep working the 9 to 5--until the fateful day that my boyfriend manages to knock me off the top of the trash pile – and then I’ll be the one that gets taken out.
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