Bagging it
This morning I was taking Milo back from his walk in the park, and I was carrying a bag full of what bags are usually full of when you are taking your dog back from the park. It's garbage day in our neighborhood, and as I was walking past one nearly full can, the attractive young garbage man who was about to empty it pointed at my bag and said, "Wanna put that in here?"
"Oh, um, okay."
"You don' wanna keep it, do you?"
"Well, no, I don't." So I put the bag in the garbage can, which he then rolled out to the truck.
It somehow felt that I'd done something vaguely rude, but it was the young man's idea, and he is, after all, a trash collector and probably has few illusions about what trash contains. It would normally be rude to disrobe and start telling a relative stranger all about your latest "episode," too, but not if they were your doctor.
I still feel kind of weird about it, though.
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Who is Miss Conduct?
Robin Abrahams writes the weekly "Miss Conduct" column for The Boston Globe Magazine. Robin, who has a PhD in psychology from Boston University, has worked as a theater publicist, organizational-change communications manager, editor, stand-up comedian, and professor of psychology and English. She lives in Cambridge with her husband, Marc Abrahams, founder of the Ig Nobel Prizes, which are given annually for achievements that first make people laugh and then make them think.
