Phobia

The absolute worst moment, and the one that often kicks off a 48 hour screamfest, is on Wednesday morning, when the great stinking scow makes its way down our alley, a mere forty feet from the playroom in the back of the house.  The playroom that features big glass sliding doors and floor-to-ceiling windows so we can enjoy the view of our weedpatch, frumpy detached garage, and the dusty alley beyond.

When I hear the squeal and hiss of the beast slowing to turn down the alley, the fight-or-flight mechanism in my nervous system cranks into high gear.  There is a tingling of spine, a sharpening of vision, a retraction of vulnerable bits.   At first, this reaction was just preparation for the onslaught of frantic children that would come at me from any and all directions, screaming “JURBAGE CHUCK JURBAGE CHUCK!”

But now it has become something more.

Although I know that the likelihood of a garbage truck crushing our garage, plowing through the deck, smashing into the back of the house, and then pummeling us with its giant green forks is much less likely than us being killed by lightning, or even by lightning bugs, I have developed a primal fear of that machine.  My grownup, logical brain is, of course, able to overcome the reptilian lower functions within a few seconds; but at that terrible instant when the truck releases a psshht of extra pneumatic brake pressure, I’m as jumpy as a feral cat.

I never used to have anything against Wednesdays or Thursdays.  But now, when those days roll around, I walk on eggshells. Wednesdays and Thursdays are garbage/recycling/yardwaste pickup days in my neighborhood, so garbage trucks patrol the streets like rusty diesel dinosaurs.  That’s three separate pickups on the street one block over from ours on Wednesday, and three separate pickups on our street on Thursdays.  That adds up to two full days of terror for my little girls.  Mostly for Twin A, aka Cobra.  Twin B, aka Butterbean, is just copying her big sister when she freaks out, mostly.

Our lot slopes from front to back, so the ground floor of our house is about eight feet higher than the gravel surface of the back alley.  All the girls see as the truck eases down to empty the neighboring apartment building’s dumpster is its massive green flanks and steel ribcage looming above the roof of our garage.  No wheels, no driver, just a roaring hulk.

The brakes whine and hiss once more when it stops right in front of our garage.  A cloud of dust rises and briefly conceals the truck before dissipating. There is an excruciating pause as the dinosaur pants for a few minutes, waiting for its human minion to prepare the dumpster to be disemboweled into its gaping maw.

After what’s surely only one or two minutes–despite the hands of my internal clock spinning like fan blades–the leviathan snatches up the dumpster in its rigid robot arms and slings it overhead, emptying its fetid contents and clanging the dumpster lid shut, swinging it open, clanging it shut again.

Then the minion jumps out once more, pushes the wheeled dumpster back into its protected spot, and the monster rides off with the man prodding its central nervous system, beep-beep-beep-ing its backward way out of our alley. And for the next two days, any banging or clanging, any loud engine noises, any beep-beep-beeping, elicits the same reaction from Cobra: “JURBAGE CHUCK!!!” as she sprints for my nearest leg.

Her sister soon follows, at first just because she wants to get in on the excitement, and then because she gets caught up in the terror.  Soon, both of them have trembling death-grips on my knees, and gasp for me to lift them “uppy uppy uppy,” which I can only do by prying them off my legs.  They then shiver in my arms, their little fists full of my leg hair; the tender flesh that was once on the backs of my knees now under their fingernails. Cobra’s (and to a lesser extent, Butterbean’s) relationship to the garbage truck is not one exclusively defined by terror, though.

There is also an element of fascination, which gives me hope that by nurturing her interest in her tormentor, we can help her be at peace with it. If I’m quick enough on Wednesday mornings, I can scoop the girls into my arms before the truck makes the turn into the alley, and rush out onto the deck to watch its approach, narrating with feigned delight as it comes.

“Garbage truck is coming!  Yay!  Garbage truck is our friend! Yay! Taking all the garbage away!”

“Poo-poo jurbage,” Cobra says.  That’s just a thing she says.  But it’s not a thing she says when she’s terrified, so I’m happy to hear it. If I’m lucky, I can attain a sightline that allows me to catch the driver’s eye.

“Look!  See?  Driver!  Yay!  Wave to the driver!  Hi driver!  Driver is our friend!”

Whether he notices and waves back can make or break the next 48 hours. There has been progress.  The girls can see a garbage truck when we’re walking around the neighborhood, and comment matter-of-factly, “Jurbage chuck.”

“Yes,” I respond.  “Jurbage truck.  Our friend.  Yay.” If, on a Thursday, they’re eating lunch when the recycling truck comes down our street, and I angle their chairs so they can see the action, they’re capable of holding it together enough to finish their lunch without any drama, as long as I speak in soothing tones about the magic of recycling.  “All those empty Daddy Juice bottles we put in the blue can?” I say.  “The big truck eats them, and then it poops out stained-glass windows!”

But all that progress can be undone with one poorly played Wednesday morning.

There have been other fears too.  A spider in the tub made for a week’s worth of touch-and-go bathtimes.  A traumatic poop-in-the-bathwater incident soon afterward made us wonder if the kids would ever be able embrace personal hygiene.  But none of them have been as persistent as the fear of the mighty Truckasaurus Garbagicus. I always figured that, with all the time the kids spend with their old man, my laid-back nature would rub off on them.

When it became clear that they would be afraid of stuff, I thought I would have little tolerance for that sort of nonsense.  What I’m starting to realize, though, is that it took me decades to develop my own protective layers of dispassion, and spending my days with vulnerable little critters is chipping away at the carapace.  Having kids, at least for me, has caused me to have instant empathy.  I don’t need to think about what they must be feeling in order to understand it.  In most cases, I just feel it.  And that’s why I think that I’m starting to take after my kids as much as they’re taking after me.

I sure hope I don’t poop in the tub tonight.