I'm the neighbourhood 'bin-colour reminder twerp' and I'm sick of it

I bumped into Jen from down the road. She said “Danny, I just want to thank you for your work. You may not think it makes a difference to people’s lives but it’s important, it matters, it’s a real highlight of my week!”

I felt very chuffed: I said “Wow, thanks Jen, that means a lot to me. You know, when you write a weekly newspaper column, you don’t get a lot of feedback, so it’s nice to know that readers appreciate what I do, as a chronicler of the human condition”. And she said “Do you write a newspaper column? Didn’t know that.”

As it turns out, I’m respected and revered in my neighbourhood, admired and adored up and down my street, quite the local celebrity of the local community… but only on Tuesday nights when the bins go out. Because I happen to be The Bin-Colour Reminder Twerp.

Every street has one: an over-peachy, try-hard numbnut with OCCD – Obsessive Council-Collection Disorder. We are the ones who remember which week is green-waste recycling week and which week is household-recyclables week. We have it marked on our calendars, programmed into our phone-alerts, tattooed onto our forearms along with detailed information on alternative pick-up dates if collection-day falls on ANZAC Day or Christmas Day.

And every week, on the day before collection-day, we are always the first to put out our bins (I like to aim for a 9am Tuesday-morning kerbing, or 9.04am if the car is in the driveway and I have to squeeze past the bins slowly without scraping off the duco).

Bin-Colour Reminder Twerps provide a vital community service. Neighbours see our bins out and think, “Oh, it’s that colour this week! Thank you Bin-Colour Reminder Twerp, you over-peachy, try-hard numbnut!”

Then they copy our bin-colour configuration. And the next neighbour copies their bins. And like a Native American smoke-signal, the bin-colour message travels down the street, each neighbour wheeling out their bins, thinking to themselves, “Good work, Bin-Colour Reminder Twerp! You have allowed us to pay no attention to council collection schedules, and for that we are forever grateful.”

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Being a Bin-Colour Reminder Twerp is a mixed blessing. Yes it’s nice to be adored and revered by one and all, but I also feel like I’m being taken advantage of – that my neighbours really only love me for my bin-colour diligence, and not for who I am as a person, which hurts like hell. So next week I’m thinking of doing the unthinkable.

On Tuesday morning at 9am I am going to… put out the wrong-coloured bin. Let everyone copy. Then I will sneak out at midnight and swap my bin for the right one.

It will throw the street out of whack, the neighbourhood, the electoral district. It may even contribute to the irreversible environmental destruction of our planet. But I must do it to teach my neighbours a lesson. That I’m not just The Bin-Colour Reminder Twerp. I’m a regular petty-minded, spiteful-natured twerp as well.