Free crap, Part I
The Wife and I are saving for a new house, but I fear we will never actually be able to move.
It is not that we don’t have the money. We already have saved a lot more than many people spend on a down payment. And it’s not that we lack the ability to pack, though it is one of the few things that The Wife is incredibly bad at.
The big problem, as I see it, is that we have too many address labels. We have never bought address labels in the year and a half we’ve been married, but charitable organizations that allegedly are strapped for cash will not stop sending them to us.
Need new address labels? Send a donation to one charity. Every other charity in North America will send you free address labels in the hopes that such a grand gesture will touch your heart and prompt you to send them a check for $10.
The Wife has a soft spot for animals, so she made a modest donation to the Humane Society of the United States. Since then, we have heard from every animal charity you have ever heard of and several more. They always send address labels. They have taken over my desk.
Here are a few a sample conversations:
“Do we have any stamps?”
They’re under the address labels.
“Have you seen the calculator?”
Look under the address labels.
“Where is the cat?”
Look under the address labels.
OK, I made that last one up, but this is absolutely true: We have 462 free address labels. That unbelievable total of free address labels is in addition to the seemingly weekly shipment of plain black-and-white address labels we receive from our insurance company (which we actually do send money to). They have sent labels with just my name, just her name and both our names. The ones with just my name get used for paying bills because The Wife likes to save her free address labels with photos of dogs, cats and flowers for her personal mail, which – in this Internet age – is another reason we will never be able to use all the labels, which just keep coming.
If only there were 462 people we liked well enough to send Christmas cards … and in fact were ambitious enough to send Christmas cards to the people we actually like.
It is not that we don’t have the money. We already have saved a lot more than many people spend on a down payment. And it’s not that we lack the ability to pack, though it is one of the few things that The Wife is incredibly bad at.
The big problem, as I see it, is that we have too many address labels. We have never bought address labels in the year and a half we’ve been married, but charitable organizations that allegedly are strapped for cash will not stop sending them to us.
Need new address labels? Send a donation to one charity. Every other charity in North America will send you free address labels in the hopes that such a grand gesture will touch your heart and prompt you to send them a check for $10.
The Wife has a soft spot for animals, so she made a modest donation to the Humane Society of the United States. Since then, we have heard from every animal charity you have ever heard of and several more. They always send address labels. They have taken over my desk.
Here are a few a sample conversations:
“Do we have any stamps?”
They’re under the address labels.
“Have you seen the calculator?”
Look under the address labels.
“Where is the cat?”
Look under the address labels.
OK, I made that last one up, but this is absolutely true: We have 462 free address labels. That unbelievable total of free address labels is in addition to the seemingly weekly shipment of plain black-and-white address labels we receive from our insurance company (which we actually do send money to). They have sent labels with just my name, just her name and both our names. The ones with just my name get used for paying bills because The Wife likes to save her free address labels with photos of dogs, cats and flowers for her personal mail, which – in this Internet age – is another reason we will never be able to use all the labels, which just keep coming.
If only there were 462 people we liked well enough to send Christmas cards … and in fact were ambitious enough to send Christmas cards to the people we actually like.
posted by David at 10:30 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home