I know, i'm not the best when it comes to viewing everyone with an equal eye. By that I mean, i can sterotype on sight. Wether it be the type of person that shops at walmart (the overweight white female with black stretch pants and an oversized mickey mouse shirt), the top three stories on local news will feature poor inner city minorities in one way or another, or how the old lady in front of me at the grocery store is SURE to pull out her checkbook and write a time consuming check to pay for her groceries instead of just cash or a debit card.
Anywho, this brings me to my story. About 3 weeks ago, I decided to throw away a plant I had. It was a large, plant, kinda tropical..about 6 feet tall and basically, a pain in the ass to maintain and deal with. It started to die, it was going down hill, and although i felt a bit guilty about it "you know, i could save this, if i REALLLLLY tried...." I decided it was time to part with it. So, I threw it away.
I took my garbage out that nite around 5:15, which i always do early, or else i forget and my garbage pickup is like the brink of freakin' dawn the next day....and i went to the store to pick up some stuff.
So, I get back around an hour later, and i noticed right away...somebody had taken my plant. Someone had, gone by my house, looked at my garbage, saw my plant and said to themselves, "hey, that guy's garbage would look great in my house!!!"
So, my immediate thought was, "who would have taken it?" I mean, the plant was a decent plant..but the pot it was in, was just the free 50 cent variety..cheap, basically useless for much of anything and it WAS dying....and honestly, it also alleviated my conscience, i didn't feel like quite the plant killer anymore thinking how someone who took it, obviously wanted to save it.
Well, my house is at the back of the sub....the road dead ends and there's a turn right before that..so really, only about 8 or 9 people REALLY ever need to go buy where i live cause of how the sub is played out. Of those 8 or 9 people one of em' jumped to the top of the list....
This is where my stereotype came in to play...
There's a house..up the curve from me that i can see about half of from my yard...There's a black lady that lives there with her white bf i believe ( i think he's the bf cause i see him leaving and going a lot) and her daughter. This is the house that has their Christmas lights hanging down BELOW the frame of their garage door so when they opened it up, they had to physically lift the cord to get the 93 windstar inside, instead of just taking them on the frame...the lights also twinkled multiple colors...while the ones on one window were green..another one was blue..and some around the front door were gold. Just hideous.
The landscaping consists of a single rosebush in the middle of the front yard...no mulch or boarder of anykind around it..unless you count 12 inch high crabgrass as a natural boarder. And the yard in areas has that look of a field where a group of deer have laid for awhile to mat the grass down in places.
So, my initial thoughts were..it's this lady who took my garbage. ...but i have no way of proving it...she A) is trashy from her get up around her house...B) has zero sense of style or taste from again, the getup around her house and C) is one of the few people that would go by my house and see my garbage.
On to the evidence:
On Sunday's, i drop the girls off at their mom's house at 7, then come home, strap on my ipod and go for a walk around the neighborhood. Takes about 25 minutes and i check out everyone's houses..see what they've done for landscaping and try to peak in their homes to get decoration ideas. Anywho, i was walking by the trashy ladie's house and as i was admiring/wondering if her rosebush would come back...i noticed a plant, on the side of her home, tucked behind her air conditioning unit, but clearly visible over the top as it was tall. i thought to myself.."why do people insist on having indoor plants as outdoor decor? They don't make it?" (another DB in the neighborhood had done this for his landscaping..took two indoor plants that looked nice..planted them in his front yard, and left them there all winter..sure enough killing them and looking horrible. Whereas, myself, planted an indoor plant outside to fill a space, then knowing it would die if i left it out there, transplanted it, moved it BACK into my house, and now will use it as a deck plant in the summer, it's already starting to come out of it's dormancy and blossom again...but that's just me stroking my green thumb skill). Well, i kept walking then stopped dead in my tracks.."that plant looked JUST like my plant that someone took from my garbage..." i turned around and just looked at it.
Sure enuff, it was my plant. The unmistakable tall stalk, with the identical but much shorter stalk right next to it. Propped up behind the garbage pickers AC/unit (which surprisingly wasn't a portable...that would have fit the stereotype better if it was) plain as day from the angle i found.
So, this lady, stole my garbage, then just let it die. Why do take the risk of being caught as a garbage picker like that? why do you take garbage unless you want to do something with it and use it? She took my garbage in otherwords, to make herself MORE garbage!! Makes no sense.
Plus, the fact that i've seen it now, if I ever catch her in the proximity of the plant, i'll ask her about it in a nice, yet "hey, i know you pick through my garbage kinda way." I mean, the equivalent of this would be like if i were to see someone throwing away a nice lamp and I needed a lamp, so I took it out of their garbage. The lamp could be great, and have no problems, and look fabulous in my place, but lousy in the person's place that threw it away. However, if that person came over to my house and was like "hey, isn't that my lamp I threw away?" I'd be horrified and quite embarressed.
I'd think the same thing applies here. I understand the saying, and am actually a big fan of sayint it msyelf in social settings, usually in a dating analogy, that "one man's trash is another man's treasure." However, in this case, one man's trash, is another woman's trash.
Oh, i'm taking pictures too..i'll post those as soon as i have them.
