Note to all serious junk collectors: here is a sign you have the sickness bad. You are parked at the far end of the second-hand store parking lot enjoying a coffee. Your eye catches, in the distance, their big green garbage bin. The lid is open. The bin is full.
And sticking out atop that pile of refuse are four perfectly good plastic lawnchairs. “What the hell?” you exclaim to no one.
Briefly, you consider driving over to the bin and loading those tan lovelies in your car. These are chairs someone didn’t want so they gave them to the second-hand store. And that store didn’t want them!
But you want them.
Somewhere there is a hotline, or ought to be one. Sadly, you leave, remorsing over what might have been. Your quality of life will have to remain in the moderate position for another day.
But take heart. There is always the local dump. You are still fond of the perfectly good bookshelf you retrieved from there one day, right from under the massive sign, Absolutely No Scavenging Allowed. You assumed, maybe incorrectly, that what was meant was it was illegal to steal that sign.
You even thought at the time, “I could use a sign like that.”
©2016 Jim Hagarty
