We stood there for what seemed like an eternity staring at the dumpster. It was about eight feet in length and six feet wide. Thank goodness it stood just five feet high and was only a third full.
It looked pleasant enough – freshly painted forest green. However the smell would have made any decent skunk proud. As it sat in the back of Burger Heaven a few hundred feet off of I-80, it was all that separated us from continuing our journey to Long Island.
“Okay, let me get this straight,” I said in an attempt to be stoic. “You took your keys out of your pocket. Then we had lunch. You threw the garbage, along with the keys into the trash can. Then, after you went to the bathroom, you realized they were gone. In the meantime, the garbage was emptied and we are now faced with jumping into this dumpster to look for them. Am I missing anything?”
“No,” said Jeff. “You wanna go first?”
Was he kidding?
We climbed in together. Frantically, I searched one end of the metal coffin while Jeff searched the other. It was hard to believe less than an two hours ago I envisioned having enough time to get home and to the beach. Now I was just trying to survive the stench of leftovers. The sun pounded against the dumpster. I envisioned hell.
“You boys want gloves?” yelled the pudgy assistant manager. Thankfully, we grabbed them.
After a half hour of hopeless searching I came up with a plan. We moved all the garbage to one side of the dumpster and carefully inspected every cup, wrapper, and half-eaten hamburger in the blazing inferno.
Three hours later – no keys.
As we crawled out, Jeff began lamenting on his bad decision to rest the keys on the tray where his feast of two cheese burgers, extra-large fries, and diet coke sat.
Like two wounded soldiers, we made our way to the car pouting the entire time. Jeff slowly opened the driver’s side door. He never locked his doors in those days. As he got in the sensor rang.
“Is that the sensor?” I thought. That would only trigger if the keys were…..in the ignition.
It was a very, very quiet ride home.