the underworld. an introduction to hoarders

I was surprised as I greeted my Schwan's guy this week to find him jittery and uncomfortable. He blurted out, upon no prodding on my part whatsoever, that he had just come from "a hoarder stop."

"Whore??" I asked, in disbelief that my Schwan's guy would say whore to me.

"H-O-A-R-D-E-R," he spelled out and then repeated himself, turning to me, "hoarder." He was almost desperate looking.

Turns out, this lady hoarder is a regular on the Shwan's purchasing chain, but was new to our particular Shwan's guy Chad's route. He explained to me that, in an effort to be nice, he offered to carry the $300 dollars worth of frozen food into this woman's house. She was, afterall, "old and carrying an oxygen bag to breathe."

Well, that bag wasn't there for decoration. When Chad stepped inside, he was greeted by piles of garbage, magazines and rotted junk. He made his way through the landfill and into the kitchen. When he opened her freezer to unload the food, roaches and beetles came screaming out. This is a FREEZER! Can you imagine what was living under the rest of the mild temperatured items?

I can't. And I don't want to.

I've since learned that this woman, along with a projected 2 million other Americans, suffers from compulsive hoarding disorder. This disorder causes people to hang onto any and all items - often until it consumes their living spaces and in some cases, actually kills them. In my obsessive research on hoarders, I actually found a story of a man in England that died of dehydration in his home after becoming lost in his own maze of rubbish.  This hoarding stuff is serious, guys.

And I can only imagine that my sweet Shwan's man isn't looking forward to his Thursdays any longer, even though he gets to come to our fun and dog-loving agency. Hoarders - yet another member of my so-called underworld (A population of people who walk amongst us every day but in their spare time partake in activities that are creepy, deranged and often downright demented. Frequently, the underworld groups I'm uncovering perform such rituals that I only see appropriate for carnivals and freak shows. I'm steadily becoming aware of these groups most commonly from my crude roomate Neil, but also infrequently, from an everyday activity such as Shwan's food delivery. As a relatively sheltered girl from the South, it's staggering how common these additional underworld groups are popping up everywhere). This is starting to get scary.