Staff photo by Kevin Jacobus^^Mike Morin, 7/19/2005.

Dumpster diving is not an Olympic sport yet, but it could be someday, as you will read. It can’t be any crazier than the biathlon in the winter games, which wraps cross country skiing and rifle shooting into a single event. Could dumpster diving be Olympics-worthy? I informally surveyed my friends from a safe distance of more than 6-feet away. I was not ready for what I was about to hear.

So, I had read about this girl who accidentally threw out $500 in gift cards she received for her birthday, which sent her family into a nutty trying to recover them. Fortunately, they were saved before the municipal haulers picked up their trash. Dumpster diving avoided.

Turns out, oral appliances topped the list of things people accidentally dispose of. Or lose. Cathie dropped a dime on her brother who lost a false tooth at Brown’s Lobster Pound in Seabrook. “He had to go dumpster diving with all the lobster shells,” Cathie says with a touch of sisterly ribbing in her voice. Didn’t find it in the crustacean graveyard. Upon further review, “The tooth was on the floor under the table,” she added.

I can relate to that big time. I lost my wallet at Hampton Beach just before it was closed, or so I thought. I found it under the couch at home, after cancelling all my credit cards.

And who hasn’t wrapped their denture in a napkin while enjoying some fine dining back in the day when we went to restaurants? Heather reports that when she was waitressing, she tidied up the table and ended up inadvertently grabbing the customer’s choppers and threw them out. Fortunately, they were located. I don’t even want to know if that diner wore them out of the restaurant.

Then there is Martha. When her now-grown daughter lost her first tooth, it came up missing. It was a souvenir she absolutely had to have. She didn’t reach out to the Tooth Fairy lost and found hotline. Instead, Martha spread the contents of the family trash on some newspapers and her persistence paid off. The tiny tooth was stuck to the side of an Entemann’s donut box on the glue that holds the box closed. “Mom win – totally worth it,” she exclaimed. Following teeth, car keys were the next most popular things causing people to dumpster dive.

“I dropped my keys in the dumpster once,” Kathy confessed. “Thank God I did gymnastics when I was younger so I knew how to hop on it like the uneven bars, then down into the dumpster without actually going into it. Got ’em. Yes!” I had to ask, “Did the Russian judge give you a good score on your dismount?”

“B-plus,” Kathy shot back. Take that, Simone Biles! Easily the wackiest dumpster diving story comes from Conrad of Hudson.

“I used to dive regularly at an unguarded Dunks dumpster to get doughnuts for my pig. He really liked doughnuts,” Conrad admits. He wins Olympic gold for the swine-athlon.

Contact Mike Morin at mike morinmedia@gmail.com or follow him on Twitter at @MikeMorinMedia. His column runs the first, third and fifth Sundays of the month.

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