We’re really familiar with the trek to the local Christian Services (“thrift”) store. We’ve dropped off so much stuff there that it’s become routine. But on this particular trip, we emptied the van, I turned to look at the stuff we had left behind and I laughed.
The fondue maker caught my eye first. We had a fondue maker. We paid money for something that really required no hardware whatsoever. Cavemen, Boy scouts and Kumbaya-singing church groups have been cooking up these tasty treats over an open campfire since… the invention of fire. Well, actually, I guess it started when Doumak started extruding back in the 19th century or perhaps earlier when the ancient Egyptians thickened Marsh-Mallow (althea officinalis) root sap which means the cavemen didn’t make smores, but you get the point. Nobody really needs a smores maker, whether it’s branded by the biggest name in chocolate or not. The thing was frivolous, though not as bad as some of the kitchen gadgets I’ve seen (wireless rechargeagle illuminated wine bottle openers come to mind), but that was only part of what made me laugh. Simplicity is freeing, not funny.
What really got me was the CSC beach bag (which I got from a trade show) which represented 12 years of my life. I never actually used the bag at a beach. It sat in my closet, waiting patiently for it’s day in the sun that never came. In fact, on the rare occasions that we did go to the beach (bundled with speaking gigs like Techno Forensics or the Misti cons at Disney) we forgot all about it because we had too much stuff. Our closets were overflowing, and this particular bag kept getting demoted to the farthest depths of the closet until it took it’s final journey–to the thrift store.
And to cap it all off, there’s that funny brown bag, which we got for free from the kids school (before we started homeschooling in preparation for the Africa trip). I liked the bag because it had travel stickers all over it. I imagined that I’d use it and people would think, now there’s a guy that’s seen the world. I imagined myself as some Indiana Jones type, trekking about in search of adventure, all thanks to my Scholastic book representative wheelie bag.
If only I knew. The Journey Starts Here indeed.
snack that requires nothing more
