Yesterday, a co-worker posed the question:
“What would you do if you weren’t in advertising?”
I couldn’t come up with anything positive, so I offered this spin.
“I wouldn’t be a stonemason.”
That answer was based on my most recent “home improvement” effort, pictured here. (To be fair, this project is closer to the alley than the home.)
Based on the comically glacial progress of this deconstruction project, you could also eliminate any profession related to stones, building, demolition, or bricks. While we’re at it, let’s also cross off the list jobs having to do with project management, resource allocation, or multiplication.
A little background on my project. Apparently, back in the halcyon days of non-rolling, metal trash cans, homebuilders were flush with cement, bricks and a utopian vision for well-organized alleys. So they built an aesthetically pleasing place for the homeowner to house his unsightly trash can.
Sure, this square of bricks was fine for the static, late 20th century trash receptacle.
But these myopic homebuilders didn’t foresee the mobile technology that would revolutionize home sanitation services.
Because the arrival of the wheeled trashcan rendered the unramped trash square irrelevant. The thousands of vacant trash squares dotting our fair city bear witness to this trash-edy.
It was one spring day that I gazed upon our own discolored empty trash square with a disdain like never before. Its mere presence mocked me. That yawning, empty space . . . those walls that shielded nothing . . . why, it hasn't played host to a trash can since the '90s. The clarity came swiftly.
Destroy the trash square. Tear down these walls!
A few whacks of the sledgehammer into it and the project was officially underway.
That’s when my wife spotted me. Shrouded in a cloud of dust, striking my signature “Sledgehammer” pose. I was a heroic symbol of spontaneity and industry.
Of course, that’s not exactly how she saw me.
“What are you doing?”
“Knocking this thing down. It has to go."
“What are you planning to do with those bricks?”
[LONG PAUSE]
“Well, I mean, there aren’t that many. I’ll just put ‘em out for big trash.”
“And how are you going to get them out there.”
“Andrew’s wagon. It’s perfect.”
Hearing that, she spun to return from whence she came, leaving me to my destructive folly.
As the sun set, what remained of the trash square resembled London during the Blitz, the center of the square filled with brick shrapnel. For weeks the ruins stood, undoubtedly fueling the head-shaking chagrin of our second-guessing neighbors who viewed the devastation daily as they drove down the alley. Monday morning quarterbacks, all!
How could I possibly know how many bricks were involved in the creation and subsequent destruction of the trash square?
Last Saturday (that is, ahem, two months later), I knocked down the rest of the bricks. There's a pile of them in our pool yard. Big trash is coming this week. And Andrew’s wagon is getting pretty scratched up.
Alas, my vision for the open-spaced, border-free, wheelcan friendly trash zone is nearly complete.
Now that I think of it, I'd probably go into urban planning.
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