I am afraid of garbage trucks and sanitation workers.

I count the anonymity of one's garbage among the benefits of living in an apartment complex which I suppose merits some explanation.

When I was a child, household trash was burned in large oil drums in back yards. In my household, the kid who took out the trash got to burn it. Setting fires is very satisfying to a child, so there was innate wisdom in this practice. It got rid of the garbage while giving children a outlet for their pyromanical proclivities. Otherwise, many a household tabby would have sported charred whiskers and singed tails, and that's being optimistic.

As a young adult, I moved to the city where garbage wasn't burned it was collected. Then I began behaving oddly on garbage days.

When I heard the truck turn down my street I would bolt back into the house. I did this every Tuesday and Thursday for years. One day I realized I was running from residential garbage trucks. I thought, "How odd." but not odd enough to stop me getting the hell out of the yard when I heard the truck coming.

When Socrates said that the unexamined life is not worth living, one of his groupies should have smacked him upside the head and saved us all a lot of grief. Upon further reflection, more than I ever wanted to know was revealed about my relationship with the sanitation department.

Years before recycling I was neatly packaging my trash. I separated jars, cans, household trash, etc. If it was too big to go into a garbage bag, I boxed it. My limbs and twig bundles were a uniform length because I measured them. I never over-loaded the container. The lid always closed.

As the cloud surrounding my relationship with sanitation workers and their trucks begin to lift, there stood the shameful truth: I was afraid they would reject my trash.

To decrease my chances of having rejected trash, I spent an undue amount of time and effort packaging my garbage so it would be attractive to sanitation workers. That's just pitiful.

Now I revel in my access to dumpsters and their mechanical partners with giant forklifts. I sleep better know my trash is co-mingled with that of my neighbors.

However, note the rejected containers below. All fears are not unfounded.

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My eldest grandson is beautiful--not cute, not precious--beautiful. He is simply a beautiful creature. At nine years, he could pass for eleven. He's tall, muscular, athletic with a mane of dense, streaked blond hair. A lion would be jealous.

But it's his eyes that are so memorable. They're dark amber. I've never seen eyes that color, and they are kind, wise eyes.

Occasionally, that boy eats grasshoppers.

He doesn't eat them to excess. I think he views it as the occasional exotic snack or perhaps to cleanse his palate the way the French use sorbet. I'm thinking they are an acquired taste like raw oysters, calf brains or frog legs. It's all context.

Grasshopper don't have much taste he tells me. They are crunchy, and it's better to remove their legs which apparently have a life of their own even when the rest of grasshopper doesn't.

I think his culinary boldness is genetic from his father's clan. The eyes, of course, would be from mine.