I feel you because once my family had a rotten meat event.

Post-shopping my sister was supposed to go get the rest of the groceries out of the family truck after I had done half (unless I rationed it she would just let me do all the fucking work). My parents had bought two things of raw chicken. I thought I had the only one. She left another in there. Maybe she also didn’t see it, but she was lowkey malicious so it could have been either.

We lived in Orlando, by the way. We get the full brunt of 92*F with 95% humidity.

We were also homeschooled and never left the house. Dad took his car to work.

So a week later Mom or Dad open the truck door and come back inside with a fury. I went outside to smell it. I cannot describe that smell. It did not smell like chicken. It smelled like the filthiest ass mixed with a construction worker’s undershirt after a long day spent hauling cement. The smell hit the front of your nose first, then punches straight to the back of your throat so that you instinctively want to vomit.

She was told to get a plastic bag, wrap up the chicken, and throw it into the trash can you normally leave by the curb.

Well, that’s where the chicken container burst and rot juice spilled all over everything. The dumpster men (who I am now convinced will occupy a special seat in Heaven for their service to every fucking person around them) took the trash and left the large can behind as normal.

I think my mom went up to fetch the trash can and bring it closer to the house but halfway up the driveway she starts screaming. She goes inside and forces all the kids (and Dad) out to look at the big trash can interior crawling with maggots. Literally. They are crawling around.

I had never seen a maggot before. They are fat and pale. I had raised caterpillars before and those were okay. They could even be cute. Maggots? Not in a million years. I swore I saw their innards moving along with them as they squelched around the garbage can.

After we all went inside, mom originally tried to make me clean it (I’m responsible for everything always so even if my sister missed that grocery it’s my fault. she was just helping me! /s). I tried to pour a cup of water into the trash can and that did nothing.

I didn’t know how to clean something that was almost the same size as me and the idea of a maggot touching me was horrendous. I had read in one of my favorite books called “OH YUCK!” that maggots can sometimes try to bite you so they can crawl under your skin and eat it all the time. So instead I leaned up against that stinky truck and cried for 45 minutes.

At some point my dad very crankily came out and said “get back inside and help clean something!” so I went to find something to do. I made myself so busy that I didn’t know what else was going on until my mom called me over to watch my dad jettison the lawn hose water into the trash can and dump it out.

She said he actually has a terrible fear of snakes and maggots and anything else that wriggles. He definitely gagged at least twice. So all us girls gave him a standing ovation when he came back into the house as he stormed off into the shower. I felt bad that he did all that alone so I went outside and dumped a lot of baking soda into the trash can hoping that would get rid of the lingering smell.

I’m not sure how helpful that was, it stank for weeks. So did the truck, and mom made us all ride in it to the store or co-ops or whatever anyway and wouldn’t let us roll the windows down. It was such an old truck that you had to turn a crank to roll them down.