A Literal Dumpster Fire

 Betty Guadagno says it’s a dumpster fire down here on earth. She might be right.

I have a story about an actual dumpster fire, believe it or not.

This story takes place in the good old days of the early 2000s, which will always be the backdrop of my teen years. And a trailer in a mobile home park will always be the setting of my childhood. For all the “dysfunction” and hilarity, I wouldn’t have it any other way. People always claim the time period when they grew up were characteristically  the “best” years. News flash: no decade owns childhood (and everything is happening NOW, whether you realize that or not), and I think everybody has great stories and memories from when they grew up whatever decade it happens to be. It’s a magical time and a date can’t change that.

This story is not very magical, unless you’re a pyro. 

So we had a dumpster in the trailer park, which was called Griffith Court, out on highway 211, out of town limits, and named such because of the last name of the landlord who ran it, only boasting about ten homes (and just nine after one did burn down. And recently less because one guys trailer was such shit he just had it demolished). The dumpster was great (what?) because you didn’t have to collect smelly and rain soaked bags by your house (we only realized how great the dumpster was after it was gone) or worry about animals breaking into your bags.

One of my school friends moved into the park, oh about when I was 11 or 12. I’ll forgo mentioning her name to spare her any shame. She was growing up fast, and thought she’d take up smoking, but hide it from her parents. She may have had a fresh cig or she picked up a stray butt from the park gravel. I was not about growing up or trying a cigarette, so I was not around for this event. I think I was avoiding her for some reason. She had a wonderful habit of finding new friends to partake in her antics.

We had a good friendship, going to school and church together on Wednesdays, even though she was kind of wild in her adolescence. However, she really started to terrorize me in seventh grade, by encouraging other easily influenced girls in the class to pick on me, which made my life a living hell and made me hate school (you wouldn’t think your own friend would become your personal bully). I made amends with her years later, but I don’t remember her really apologizing, and I still really don’t forgive her. It changed the course of my teenage years and my friendships because now I had a very damaged self esteem and a trust complex. High school was not what it could have been for me; I suffered through it (I could have been just inherently shy, or actually traumatized, not sure). I could be grateful or I could be resentful, and I choose the latter. I was glad when she moved out of the park (and finally out of my life). My brother claims she had a hard life; to me it’s not an excuse to be a b—.

So, her and another girl were trying smoking, but it seems that someone caught them in the act, so they threw the lit cigarette into the dumpster, which they were hiding behind. Now you know the millions of cigarettes people smoke every day: how many of them start fires? Well…this one did (thank god it was contained in a dumpster; what if the park caught on fire?). I don’t know how long it took from when they tossed it to it smoldering to it becoming a full blown fire. Not sure, but once it was big enough to scare the girls, they came running to my house for help.

My mom answered the door. “Ms. Miriam, the dumpster is on fire!” (Obvoisuly. That’s like when Forest Gump told lieutenant Dan he didn’t have no legs). They wanted us to call 911. The thing is, we didn’t have a phone (really we did not have a house phone anymore and my dad probably took the tracfone to work), and they knew this. For whatever reason they wouldn’t go to their own homes for help, obviously because they didn’t want to reveal what they had been doing to start the fire (this was still a time when your ass would have been “torn up”). Somehow 911 was called (can you imagine the call? “What’s your emergency?” “My dumpster is on fire.” Okay).

So a fire truck drove out to Griffith Court. This girl was always causing trouble and somehow she was always in a panic about it. I gave up years ago trying to psychoanalyze her and her behaviors (i would call it definitely toxic). It probably wasn’t a hard fire to put out, and I’m sure other rescue services like the police and rescue squad showed up. Small town. Just another trailer park in crisis, nothing new. I’m sure all the neighbors of the ten trailers were outside watching the fire blaze. Everybody got their fill of drama.

And I don’t know if the fire’s cause was discovered by anybody, but I was always told it was that damn cigarette. I smoke myself so I have nothing against that in particular; it really was a rare flame. Something in there must have been really flammable. 

The sad part of the story is that that dumpster got hauled away and we never got a new one. The landlord decided he would drive his truck and pick up everyone’s trash on the weekend and take it to the dump. This was bad for several reasons, which I already described. Our new trashcan wore away the grass under it and was always wet and gross and could never fit all the bags. Maggots, flies, you name it. And then I decided our family should start recycling, and that just piled up in the house, and I don’t think the landlord was ever really recycling it. Oh well. 

If you have a dumpster, thank it for its service, and consider it a blessing.

And as I write on the porch with a lit candle, I’m going to be very careful!