I spent most of the day this past Sunday doing “admin” stuff, the office type things that we do to keep our household running. In particular, I went through our old files—old billing statements, official looking letters from big institutions, tax things. I gathered a pile of things that I needed to shred, but I decided I didn’t want to shred them, but opted to burn them instead.

Our shredder is loud, and it somehow interferes with the speakers in my office, making them amplify its loudness by emitting a loud chunky static sound. Apparently, I find this sound so grating, that I’d rather do stupid things than have to endure it. I figured I could toss the papers in our little black Weber grill, light them up, put the cover on it, and be done with them (I’ll buy some carbon credits for the greenhouse gas emissions later). This is what I did.

I thought I’d let them burn out before I tossed the ashes in our dumpster and forgot about them.

A few hours later, after dinner and cleaning up, Shannon took some trash down to the dumpster but came right back and said “bad news.” Apparently the dumpster was full of smoke.

We filled a pot and a large mixing bowl with water, grabbed my flashlight, and headed back down to the dumpster. I couldn’t believe how much smoke came out of that thing. Nothing was on fire, but some stray smoldering bits of paper had landed on some polyester clothes and made them smolder. Because the lids were closed, I’d created a smokehouse in our apartment’s dumpster.

We poured the water on the ashes. They kept smoldering. Shannon remembered that there’s a hose just inside the gate by the dumpster, but because we didn’t have our keys, I had to walk around to enter through the gate that we’d propped open when we came down with the water. As I made the loop, walking through the courtyard to the other gate, I noticed that the neighbor who lives closest to the gate with the hose was standing in the dim light outside of his apartment.

I thought I was busted. He’d noticed the smoke. Even if he didn’t, I’d have to explain why I was using the hose so late. Then I thought, why is he standing outside like this? I said hi. He said hi. Then, just as I noticed he was naked, he said “I’m naked.”

“No problem,” I said.

“I’m Ian.”

“I’m Jed.”

“Yeah, I’m naked. Sorry.”

“Not a problem.”

“I’m really sorry,” he said, as I continued past him to the hose.

“Well, I think I just set the dumpster on fire, so…”

“Yeah, we’ll call it even.”

Shan and I hosed down the dumpster until it stopped smoldering and called it a night.