Marriage and all that garbage

Is garbage disposal one of the causes of marital disharmony? Grim headlines likely to evoke nostalgic smirks but considered a typical weekend morning when burrowed deep in bed sheets with a tender head cradled in soft feather pillows, you painfully open an eye lid as the first physical movement. As the eyelid falls back gratingly, you pivot to your side murmuring to the spouse that the garbage needs to be deposited outside.

Receiving a response equivalent to prodding a redwood tree, your housewifely instincts, in their ascendancy, take over. With many a shuffle and inadvertent quick-step, but not in time to the oddly musical buzzing in your ear, you reach the aftermath of the night before – it looks and smells like the kitchen. Circumnavigating the cans, bottles, surplus edibles, you reach the point of no return – the garbage bags bulging obligingly.

It’s when this Friday morning jamboree turns into a daily event that you begin to contemplate the vicissitudes of life. What it boils down to is upgrading this activity to a higher echelon. On the one hand, thanks must be proffered to the Dubai Municipality for providing access to those silky, matt-black, wide-mouthed, extra-large plastic bags. Over the festive season, Father Christmas was hard put to find a better substitute to use as his sack of goodies.

On the other, male chivalry needs desperate resuscitation by fair means or foul. Whilst the aromas of tender spit-roasted spring chicken can temporarily unbalance the mind, beware of previous promises to clear up the garbage. With the appetite satiated, the promise turns into muffled snores emanating from the depths of the drawing room sofa. 

Is it with a hint of emotion that balmy days of early marital life are recalled?  Disposal of garbage was a task as alien as carrying in shopping and opening car doors. Would the kind endearing man ever dream of allowing his pretty wife to carry out brimful of garbage bags under the scrutiny of the whole neighbourhood? Most definitely not. It’s when that putrid smell in the kitchen induces visions of dead rats that it is time to recognise and face the fact that the first anniversary is over. You are struck by the thought that if your beautiful marriage ever went on the rocks, it would be due not to money, in-laws or another woman but a fight over the garbage.

We have conversations that go like this: 

“Sweetheart murmur if it is not too much trouble, on your way out, would you mind terribly carrying this bag?

Is it the garbage?

Why as a matter of fact, I think it is.

I carried out the garbage yesterday, didn’t I?

I think you might be right dear, but as it happens, there is more garbage today.

How come you have so much garbage?

Listen, do you think I make this garbage just to annoy you? The fact is the garbage is here and it has to be put out.

A poor man could live on what we throw away.

So find me a poor man and he can have it, if he could just get it out of my kitchen.

OK, I will take it. The only purpose I seem to serve in this house is to carry out your garbage.

It is not my garbage. There are two apple cores and one used razor blade that belong to you.”

DOOR SLAMS!

Our children at least seem to have developed a very positive attitude towards the garbage. “Oh boy Mummy, we have got four full garbage bags out today.” Andy says they are rich and they have only two bags full. If there was a competition for the most garbage disposed in town, I am sure we would be the winners hands down.

It’s time to reorganise the bagful of trouble caused by the carriers of leftovers. The quicker it is handled and matter disposed off the better. But, of course the question remains, WHO WILL DO IT?