The Rubbish Truck.

Summer Place and Summer Memories.

I started my working life working as a butcher. Having been advised to leave school as soon as possible because I was never going to make anything of education. How wrong people can be in their estimate of others. It never crossed their minds that maybe they had failed me in the education system, never seeing the honest difficulties I was having.

Anyway I left school at the age of fifteen with no qualifications of any sort, not even an O grade. I started work almost the next day as a butcher. Deep down I knew that this would never be a permanent thing, but it got me past the initial sense of defeat and a feeling of uselessness. 

When I got to University to take my first university degree the job had its uses. I was able to leave university for the summer vacation and walk into a summer job with no difficulty. One such summer I was working as a relief butcher van man. I took over the job of the regular butcher to allow him to have his two weeks holiday. Then I moved to another van and did the same again all summer. 

One day i was driving up a very narrow street. Parked up on the pavement and half on the road was a dustbin lorry. As I drove past it the driver of the bin lorry decided to just pull out back onto the road. he obviously did not look or see me. The side was torn off the butcher van. I had virtually had a load of rubbish dumped on me.

This reminds me of the very true tale of the taxi driver.  The passenger in the taxi tells the story.

One day I boarded a taxi and asked to be driven to the airport. We heading along the motorway in the correct lane and at the correct speed. Suddenly a black car jumped out of a slipway right out in front of the taxi. The taxi driver slammed on his brakes, skidded, and missed the other car by inches!

The driver of the other car whipped his head around and began yelling at us.

The taxi driver just smiled and waved at the irate driver. He was in fact really friendly.

So I asked, "Why did you just do that? That man almost ruined your car and sent us to hospital or worse." 

The taxi driver taught me what he called, " The law of the Rubbish Truck."

He explained that many people are like rubbish trucks. They run around full of rubbish, full of frustration, full of anger, and full of disappointment.

As the rubbish piles up, they need a place to dump it and sometimes they'll dump it on you.

Don't take it personally, just smile, wave, wish them well, and move on.

Do not take their rubbish and spread it to other people at work, at home, or on the streets. Others do not need  your rubbish they have enough to contend with their own.