I Fought the Law

In the spirit of the French version of the blog (i.e., "the random stuff that happens to us in our life") this blog is a taste of our city living, our Davis Square life. This blog is about trash and the escapades that one can have with trash. As mentioned in our France blog (a long time ago) we had problems with the trash in our village. Although there were only 5 families in our hamlet, someone in the hamlet could not understand the concept of putting the trash in the dumpster and closing the lid - hence critters had a field day (rather big critters from the looks of things... big, French critters). One day Team Davis did a clean up - I could not stand it any longer.


Fast Forward to the city life version. We have the same problem with critters in Somerville, except these ones are little and have rodent-like qualities... all of them, actually... they are rodents. The problem is generally at the other end of the city but, understandably, the City of Somerville impossed an ordinance that required everyone to put their trash bags in a barrel on the street so that critters could not rip open the bags and maintain the food chain. Normally, Lance does the trash but one day I decided I would pitch in (Lance was at a job interview and I thought it would be a nice gesture). I pulled out the recycling bin and put the lone garbage bag on the street. It was kind of amazing that we only had one bag and I thought "Why bother pulling the barrel out when I can just plunk down the bag?" Lance came home and this was the exchange:


LD" "Thanks, honey but you know we need to put it in the barrel, right?"

AD: "No we don't. It will be fine."

LD: "There's a city ordinance, we can get a ticket."

AD (with all the CONFIDENCE IN THE WORLD): "What? That's ridiculous. How are they going to give us a ticket? (scoff)!"


To be honesy with you, it was sheer laziness. I just did not want to drag out the barrel and I thought I was RIGHT. So you can guess what happens next - I ate crow pie. I thought I was home free when I came home and there was not ticket in the mailbox. "See? it's fine." I confidentally proclaimed. Then, a few days later, a ticket arrived in the mail. Damn them!


I boldly appealled the ticket. So, today was the hearing at 5:30. I dragged the two kids with toys, snacks and drinks in tow for the sympathy vote. We arrived to a room full of people and signed in. We were #18. Seriously - there are this many people appealing trash tickets??????? So I embarked on feeding and entertaining the kids. I took notice of the "Man/Not Man" person sitting near us. If you know Lance and I, you know we play "Man/Not Man?" whenever appropriate. So the kid factor comes into play and we ended up getting called about 4 people before we should have as the kids were getting antsy in the stroller and the guy hearing office took pity on us. I go in to the hearing room and explained the situation. They had a photo of our trash on that day (thanks iPhone) sitting there, sans barrel. After hearing my story; that we thought we were doing a favor for my unemployed husband, the hearing officer clearly insisted that that garbage bag must not have been ours. When I had that confused moment and look on my face, he insisted even more. So he declared we were all clear. Oh city living.


So I guess these trash problems digressed a bit but came back together in the end. Both were problems that had critters at the root and both were the result of lazy people. At least in this case, there was a lesson learned.