What will they think of next?

By Dan Barber

I just discovered a new invention… a smart trash can!

Diane and I just went to the Commissary to pick up a few things we needed for our dinner tonight. For those who don’t know what a Commissary is, it’s a grocery store for military people. Anyway, Diane also needed to go to the “7-Day store”… military jargon for a convenience store that is open 7-Days a week… I am going to have to learn to speak and write using regular English when I retire next year… Sorry, I’m old and tend to be easily distracted which can cause me to ramble.

Anyway back to the new invention…I parked in a spot where Diane bumped into a cement trash can last year which caused very expensive damage to her computer operated vehicle (pick-up truck)… she is damn lucky the very expensive airbags didn’t deploy. I was able to wire her plastic bumper up to keep it from falling off and her hood wired shut so it wouldn't fly off while she was driving down the highway. The cement trash can didn’t suffer any damage.

The person in the 7-Day store who Diane reported the accident to said “Don’t worry we are going to replace those trash cans with “smart trash cans.” When Diane related that story to me today, I asked, “What in the hell is a smart trash can?” She said “it beeps when it’s full of trash.” I asked, “Can’t somebody who works at the 7-Day store like a “trash retrieval specialist” (janitor) just look in the trash can to see if it needs to be dumped?” This is an example of our conversations these days… Diane usually tells me something incredulous, and it might take me awhile to catch on.

A couple of years ago Diane bought a trash can that we don’t even have to touch to open. It has a sensor when you wave your hand over it, it opens. I explained to my younger grandchildren that the trash can in the pantry likes to eat little kids… and demonstrated it to them by waving their little hands over the lid of the trash can so it "could smell them." The demonstration scared the crap out of them and helped to keep them out of the pantry until they got a little bit older and discovered that grandpa is full of BS, rambling again, sorry.

I don’t think that I will purchase a “smart trash can” until they teach it to separate the regular garbage from the recyclable garbage, automatically roll out to the street without prodding on trash day so the “Trash Retrieval” truck driver can crush the smart trash can with a claw while he or she dumps it in the back of his or her truck.  Heck, the garbage can even stay in the can for a week as it won’t even stink… because I can line the trash can with the newly invented odor eliminating trash can liners!

I think the smart thing for the 7-Day store to do, would be to keep the cement trash cans so people can’t knock their expensive plastic “smart trash cans” out of the way so they can drive through the store… they would have to change the store’s name to a “Proceed Through the 7-Day Store”… in civilian speak “Drive-Through Convenience Store,” open 7-days a week.