You, Sir, are Trash

Lately, as the weather gets even hotter and the cheesy guys start taking off their shirts and sitting on their porches, drinking beer and blasting classic rock on the car radio, I can't help wondering as I always do: what makes a person "trash?"

Granted it's never nice to call somebody "trash," so let me say I reserve the term for people who are consistently bad or obnoxious. Trash, with all of its other attributes, gets in your face and refuses to leave. Trash is awful and thoughtless. Trash has EARNED its name, in spades.

These are the hallmark attributes of "trash" as I see it. You don't need to do all these things to be trash, and people who DON'T qualify as trash sometimes do many of them...but if this sounds like you -- particularly the NASTY stuff -- then you, ma'am, are TRASH.

• A "hard" look. Trash ages early and poorly, possibly from living a "party" lifestyle and working unhealthy jobs, and eating too much fast food. Bad skin and hair.
  
• A resistance to changes in style, if not a downright rebellion against updating the way they looked in junior high. Mullets, rat-tails, bottle-bleaches, "zoomer" pants, all of it cheap and out-of-date.
• Tinkering with cars. This love of tinkering doesn't extend to other mechanical devices...just cars.
• A complete lack of subtlety in every aspect of life. Trash doesn't whisper, it yells. Trash doesn't drive a car, it races and squeals. Trash doesn't care about shades of gray.
• Lack of self-reflection beyond the most base concerns. No analysis of personality or existential angst. Trash falls asleep very quickly at night. Trash knows that the only way to confront a problem is to punch it.
  
• Too much alcohol, too many cigarettes, prescription drug abuse.
  
• Classic rock and Eminem only, though sometimes the girls like cheesy gothic rock if they're feeling "kinky," and sometimes the boys will dabble in metal. Whatever it is, it must ALWAYS be LOUD. Bonus "trash points" if your speakers are in your windows facing OUTWARD. Hard-of-hearing at a very young age.
  
• No work ethic. In fact, a certain pride in not working, yet still drawing a cheque in some way.
• A certain accent. In southern Ontario the trash accent has blunt consonants and slurry vowels. Try speaking without ever quite closing your mouth. Drop the w's that come at the end of words ("show" becomes "shah"). It's a mixture of northern Ontario and Quebec. When you want to say "garage," say "GAIR-edge" instead of "gurr-AWDGE."
• Aggression. Love that physical contact. Love that yellin'.
  
• Lack of empathy. Trash NEVER worries about what might be annoying to OTHER people...unless they are trying to annoy those people.
• Spitting on the pavement. Why do you spit on the pavement? I don't know.
• Ill-chosen, ugly tattoos, fresh off the wall of the tattoo parlour.
  

One half of my family is trash, but I think a crucial part of their trashiness is due to alcoholism, not to mention a lack of education. They sometimes manage to "get it together," but whenever they spend too much time with other trash (or each other) they invariably drink too much, fight, and get into debt. So hey, I know what I speak of, here.