One Man's Garbage......

Businesses come and go but there's no question that one of the most successful, and inventive, is 1-800-GOT-JUNK. What a creative idea...everybody has junk, stuff, crap, or garbage that they don't know what to do with...and someone has answered that call by charging you to haul it away. They probably take the best of it to another creative mind who paws through it and re-sells it to the rest of us at various flea markets around the country. The possibilities to make money from crappy stuff is endless.

However, what constitutes an article being correctly labelled as 'garbage' is pretty subjective. There are a couple of guys that my cousin Carol and I are quite close to, who have their own definition of garbage. They believe that if it's no longer fit to eat, has unremoveable mold/rust embedded in it, or has been crushed beyond recognition...then it's gargage! Everything else is useable, and in fact valuable for future use and should be stored until that date arrives.

Our husbands, Bob and Wayne, are clones! We know this because there's no common gene pool that we can identify and these two are more alike than Siamese Twins. Their 'sameness' goes beyond them looking alike, acting alike, and thinking alike...it drops to the most basic human level....they feel the same way about garbage! Now that's not a coincidence! Oh yea...clones!

Separately they are regular junk haulers. Together, they are 1-800-GET-JUNK. Case in point--they are going out for a fun night together. When Wayne arrives to pick up Bob at his house, Bob is glowing with excitement. "Look at the terrific baby crib I just picked up on the curb for free...not a mark on it." Wayne wants to feel that same glow and he barely lets the words get out of Bob's mouth before he says, "Yeh, there's also a white bookcase up the street that looks really nice". Turns out Bob wanted the bookcase as well but Carol put the kie-bosh on that piece.

Before you can say 'Value Village', the two of them are wrestling it down the street and loading it in to the back of Wayne's car. Now, he knows that we don't have room for it, I don't want it, and I'll put a beating on him if he tells me "it was too good to throw away." But we have a new daughter-in-law....who isn't wise to his ways yet. She has lots of books, therefore she must need it. (Note...she's still getting used to the 6 ft pine table that magically appeared in her garage last week).

The most irritating part of this whole story is that there never fails to be that one instance when an urgent need arises for something and they can each root through a drawer, box, shed, etc. and come up with the single item to solve the problem and be able to say, "There, I KNEW I'd need it someday."

The bookcase is nice and it doesn't have a mark on it.