Phew! A Close Call, With An Assist By A Good Guy

Father's still cleaning out my sister's old room.  Since today was Recycling Day, yesterday he cleaned out some more things, one of them being a bag of books.

Now I don't know why he would throw away a good bag of books.  If we don't want them -- and I'm not saying that -- why not donate them somewhere?  So I decided to take them.  However, I didn't want him finding out when he backs out the driveway in the morning (this morning) and see it's not there.  Still have to live at home.

So I decide to do it in the morning.  But when?  I could wake up early, like a quarter to 8 ... nah, too early, and besides, the recyclers come around at around 10.  A quarter to 10 seems more like it ... but that's around the time Grandmother wakes me up to test her blood pressure and sugar, and to give her her insulin.  I'm lazy, so I decide to not set an alarm and instead rely on Grandmother to wake me up.  Once I'm done with her, I'll go outside and retrieve the bag.

This morning all goes according to plan.  Still groggy helping out Grandmother, but once I go outside, I'm all good.  But then, just before I apply the test strip to the blood on her pricked finger, I hear this huge rumble outside.  "Oh, shit," I said loudly.

I get up and walk to the window.  It was the recycling truck!  So, as I left Grandmother in the lurch, a drop of blood sitting on her finger, I bolted down the stairs and outside.

I race down the driveway and try and get the attention of the guy who was throwing our stuff in the truck.  I finally get face-to-face to him and tell him that I needed the bag of books back.  Bad news was he already dumped all the stuff; he was just about to get back on the truck.  Good news was that it wasn't, like, dumped all the way in the back of the dumpster or something.  It's hard to describe, but it looks like this truck was designed so that a guy could throw the recyclables in a chute off to the side of the truck (on the passenger side) and it would be pressed into the payload.  He tossed the bag over, but all the contents were still on this side chute.

And thank Buddha the guy wasn't a dick about reaching in there and giving me back everything.  In fact, he was totally cool about it.  He even made sure he got every book and pamphlet.  I probably made them, like, two minutes late on their route, but the guy was extremely helpful.

I should give the city a call.