The grabber

One of the things that I was told to acquire before surgery is something called a grabber. A grabber is a three-foot long aluminum shaft with a handle at one end and a claw at the other end. It lets me grab things that I wouldn’t otherwise be able to grab. Here’s what it looks like:

This is not my first experience with a grabber, and when I feel that grabber in my hand, it takes me back to another time in my life.

When I was a landscape architecture student at the University of Guelph, I took a year off school and got a full-time job working as a groundskeeper for the university. One of my first tasks as a groundskeeper was to collect litter from the grounds of the school. I was given a canvas bag with a shoulder strap and a grabber. With the grabber in my right hand, I picked up the litter and slung it into the bag that hung by my left side. Many people didn’t want this job. They thought that garbage picking was demeaning. Since I was the new guy on the grounds crew, I was given the job often. I didn’t mind because I loved the job. With that grabber in my hand, I felt cool and dangerous. As I strolled across the grounds of the campus looking for litter, I twirled my grabber in the way that a gunslinger from a western movie twirls his six shooter. That grabber became an extension of my body. When I spotted a piece of litter I would sometimes walk past it and then reach behind me with the grabber to get the litter and flick it into the bag all in one smooth motion. Every piece of litter was different and required a different approach. I developed lunges and other dramatic moves that I borrowed from martial arts and fencing. I felt cool and I imagined that the students on the campus admired me.

But the garbage job didn’t end with picking. It got even cooler than that. Every couple of days, the trash barrels on campus needed to be emptied. For this job, there was a small flat bed trailer with a large garbage can mounted on it and a platform for me to stand on. It looked remarkably like a chariot, but rather than being drawn by two horses, it was hitched to a John Deere tractor. My job was to stand at the back of the chariot, like a Roman soldier, and hold onto the garbage can. We drove across the campus stopping at every garbage barrel along the way. At each stop, I jumped from my mount, emptied the garbage barrel into the chariot, jumped back onto the chariot, and commanded the driver to continue. Once again, I felt cool and imagined that the students on the campus admired me.

So now when I have a grabber in my hand again, it feels good. This time I’m not picking litter with it (although I will pick up any litter that I come across). In the morning after using my grabber to put on my underwear, I give it a couple of twirls and for a moment I travel back to my glory days as a groundskeeper on the University of Guelph campus.