The Village Idiot: Saving junk and the boxes too
I took a load out to the town dump this morning. I had to get rid of two old TV sets. Other than the fact that they don’t work and can’t be fixed, there was absolutely nothing wrong with them.
But Sue is afraid to throw anything out now, because she sees the most common knickknacks appraised for a small fortune on the “Antiques Roadshow” and thinks, “What if I throw this out and someday it’s worth $250,000 like that ugly vase they had on last night?”
It’s bad enough that she’s afraid to throw out half of our garbage now. She won’t throw out the boxes, either. “Antiques Roadshow” is always going on about how much more this junk is worth if it still has the box it came in. And, taking their standard advice not to try to spruce things up, she’s stopped cleaning things altogether. “Are you crazy?” I expect her to yell at me some night, “Don’t wash the dishes, that could cut their value in half!”
Somehow, I can’t see our broken TV sets ever fetching $250,000. Even if they were appropriately filthy and in their original boxes. They’re not even cable-ready. Maybe, someday, years from now, they may acquire some kitsch value, but not if everyone saves them.
Someone has to have the courage to throw their garbage away so the rest of ours will become a fraction of a penny more valuable. I have that kind of courage.
I am not alone. Down at the dump I met a small band of like-thinking brothers, the Toss It and Forget It Support Group.
This morning I arrived just in time. Big Al, a founding member, was having second thoughts about throwing away a computer printer he bought in 1988. It was the size of a washing machine. It won’t work with any computer made after 1993, yet he was having a hard time shoving it into the waiting dumpster.
“You don’t understand,” he pleaded, “I paid $1,200 for this! Maybe the less fortunate can use it,” he said.
“The less fortunate have laptops with DVD players, Al, not printers that don’t work. Let it go,” I said.
Slowly, slowly it toppled into the giant recycling bin, joining a pile of old-fashioned giant car phones, five-year-old answering machines, as-seen-only-on-TV exercise equipment (I dare the guys on “Antiques Roadshow” a hundred years from now to figure out what a ThighMaster was used for), plastic duck lamps, glow sticks, Big Mouth Billy Bass plaques, Betamaxes and the tapes that go with them.
Then Big Al walked to my car to help me with the TV sets. As we walked to the dumpster, we saw a scavenger wearing an “Antiques Roadshow” baseball cap pull out Al’s printer and load it on his truck. He gave us a funny look and said, “You don’t still have the box, do you?”
(Jim Mullen is the author of “It Takes A Village Idiot: A Memoir of Life After the City” (Simon and Schuster, 2001). He also contributes regularly to Entertainment Weekly.)