Muckimann

First cigarette of the day, coffee on the back porch. Sunrise. An advantage of living in Northern climes at this time of year-- the sun waiting for the slothful to arise before putting on its morning display.

I am seeking gainful employment, however. At the agency I was told they may find me work at the paper factory, or as a garbage man. The garbage collectors apparently quit in droves at this time of year as the weather deteriorates.

I have always felt that I would be a good garbage man. I have always felt a certain cameraderie with these fellows-- when, as a teenager, driving my mother's VW beetle, while passing a stopped garbage truck on a suburban street in Florida I almost ran over a garbage man as he stepped out from behind the truck, and he swung the empty garbage can he carried out of the way in the nick of time, and he jumped back and smiled, as if to say, "That's cool," and ever since then I have passed stopped garbage trucks as if I were passing a stopped bus, that is, very slowly-- or when, as a late night hot dog vendor in Portugal, and I packed up for the night at 5 am,  and hitched my cart to the van, and the only ones to share the forlorn cobbled streets with me were a few sad, solitary drunks, or the garbage men, and they'd wave with one hand while hanging from their truck with the other, and I'd wave back, the only time we ever saw each other at five am, and never speaking, just a nod or a wave, we lonely, late night laborers.

It is also a noble profession, cleaning up the mess others have left behind.

I think that garbage men may leave less of a mess on this planet, being the ones to clean it up, just as the ones who do the laundry may wear their jeans for a few extra days , and the ones who wash the dishes may use the same drinking glass for weeks on end, or eat out of the cooking pot, and the ones who sweep the floor may take off their shoes when entering the home, and the ones who take the garbage bin out to the street for the garbage men to collect may try to produce less garbage.

Perhaps the garbage man hopes to be unemployed someday, when there is no garbage to collect, just as the peacemaker hopes to be unemployed someday.

Or perhaps I idealize the garbage man.

Sigh.

When the lady at the employment agency asked if I would mind working as a garbage man, I said with great enthusiasm, "Ja! Ich liebe this kinda work!", and I raised my arms and flexed my muscles, and she said, "Muckimann!", and I thought she said, "Monkeyman!", so I exclaimed, "Ja!", because, well, hanging off of the truck and other acrobatic garbage man feats could be seen as monkey-like agility.

Which reminds me, where is that chimp, anyway? He returned for work this morning, but only on a part-time basis, and even then, he's been taking far too many banana breaks.

Sigh.

I was later informed of my error in understanding "muckimann" as "monkeyman", and told with a smile, and a reflective pause, that "muckimann" means "muscle man", which I found even more flattering than "monkeyman."

Muscle man garbage man. Pin-up calendar for the girls, "The garbage men of Aldenhoven."

Ja.

But then, upon confirming this through Google Translate, I found "muckimann" to mean "jackass man."

Sigh.