I’ve played football and ping-pong at work. I’ve bubbled and showered on the clock. I’ve played computer games when I had nothing else to do.

But the most fun I’ve ever been paid to have?

Trash.

If you’ve been home between 8 and 12ish on trash day, you’ve probably had a chance to see the garbage truck drive slowly in a residential area. The garbage collectors hop off the truck, grab the trash bags, throw them into the receptacle, run to the next house and repeat.

Once about a dozen bags are in there, one of the collectors will holler at the driver to compact the stuff. Some bags pop during the process, and the occasional resulting confetti is a pile of fun to watch the first time, but the first time something glass gets turned into confetti, ain’t nobody laughing.

I love throwing things, and rain adds a solid pound of water to at least the initial weight of a bag left out all night. So to get to grab a 20-pound bag of trash and hurl it a solid 10 to 30 feet is just massive piles of fun … if also a rotator cuff or back injury waiting to happen.

Sometimes we played catch with the bags -- I’d sprint out (beloved mother is not surprised) to the house way at the end of a circle so the truck didn’t have to drive that far back, and then I’d throw the bags to the other collector, and he’d make sure they got in. Then I’d race back, jump onto the (moving) truck and ride to the next street.

Riding was the most fun of all, especially when the thing got going. You’ve never had so much fun as you have dodging twigs and branches with your eyes closed while going 35 miles an hour around a bend in the road, one foot securely on the platform and the other just sort of there for the ride … but close, so it doesn’t hit a wooden fence post and science all over everything.

The wind and the trees and the rain tell you how fast you’re going, and your stomach tells you it’ll be fine long as you hold on, so as the specks of water smash into your face -- another reason your eyes are closed -- you know you feel as free as you ever will.

Collecting trash in that town of about 15,000 at the time took about three hours for I think two crews. Once you were done, you were done with work for the day, so any time a garbage collector called in sick (usually on a rainy day), I volunteered to do it.