This is the story of a tall plastic kitchen garbage can named Gabriella, Gabby, for short. Gabby resided in a beautiful home on Long Island's North shore and had wonderful caring owners living in the home. Gabby had many kitchen friends including Ollie the Oven, Dixie, the Dishwasher,and Freddie the Refrigerator. Freddie was taller and wider than everyone else and was called the "General" by his kitchen residents. After all he was a General Electric.

Gabby loved collecting the family's garbage, having her plastic liners thrown out and enjoyed getting washed and scrubbed when some unsightly stains appeared . She loved her duties and even taking care of unforeseen spillages and crumbs but her owners always gave Gabby a good wash with a minty or lemony cleanser. One weekend while her owners were on vacation in the Hamptons, Long Island, they had forgotten they had left some cantaloupe in Gabby. Gabby had the worse case of fruit flies she could remember. She developed a really bad fear of flies (pteronarcophobia) ...a big word for you readers out there.

When the family came home. the bag of rotting cantaloupe was thrown out. The owners felt so bad about forgetting to dump it before their weekend excursion. Gabby got scrubbed down really good and loved it. She smelled clean and fresh and was happy but never forgot about those fruit flies. Gabby hated any kind of flies and maggots more than anything.She hated flies more than vomit, mucus, or bloody sanitary pads. But Gabby was happy to put up with some small inconveniences . She loved her job and did it well. But her fear of flies as opposed to her fear of flying (aviophobia), remained.

Gabby continued her conscientious and diligent work as the kitchen garbage can for years,enjoying the company of her appliance friends and a newer edition to the kitchen family, a TV that everyone enjoyed watching..not as big as the ginormous TV in the living room but well suited for the kitchen. Gabby loved some of the sci-fi type shows the family watched and even hoped what she thought was TV magic would rub off on her one day. Her favorite movies were The Exorcist and Carrie. Gabby even tried concentrating exercises and using transcendental meditation and tried to develop telekinetic abilities. Gabby worked on getting magical powers inside of herself but deep down inside knew she was just a garbage can. Leave magic to Penn and Teller ,she thought, another dynamic duo she loved to watch on TV with all the other super heroes.

One day, the family left for a 2 week vacation at their villa in Baghdad. In their rush to get to the airport, some scraps of sausages and eggs, Lucky Charms cereal and a small amount of milk was left in the bottom of Gabby's plastic liner bag. Within a couple of days,several species of flies and maggots started to congregate inside of Gabby. Gabby wished she could ask her fellow appliances and gadgets for help but Let's Get Serious Here. Garbage cans can't talk.

Gabby tried concentrating really hard to somehow get these intruders out of her. She tried to physically squeeze them out, squeezing harder than a Sumo wrestler who was constipated for a month. She employed all her telekinetic and psychic forces she learned about by watching TV. She tried to induce condensation and heat inside her so that the flies and maggots might drown or boil to death . Gabby continued to squeeze relentlessly, day and night, night and day. With the magic she was hoping she had, all but drained from her polythane body, Gabby just could not fend off these scavengers inside her feeding on the decaying meat and eggs. There was no lucky charm in Gabby's mental arsenal.

When the family came home from Baghdad, they felt terrible seeing Gabby in such agony and emotionless state. Her fear of flies had left her in a state of shock. But instead of a needed scrub down the owners went out that same day they got home and bought a stainless steel shiny new garbage can from their local Dan's Appliances store with a motion sensor detection lid.

After a decade of loyal service, Gabby was being replaced. She was put out to stud in some landfill in Staten Island where she now resides with a rotting bridge table, a rusty chaise lounge, a torn couch, and a clock that gives the correct time twice a day and some wandering hobo who used Gabby as his personal toilet bowl. What a sad demise for Gabby. Instead of being a faithful receptacle for rotten eggs and a stalwart sentry, she would be left rotting for centuries to come. Back on Long Island ,Steely Dan, as the other appliances called him was having the time of his life in the kitchen Gabby called home. It just goes to show, one man's garbage is another man's treasure.