Seen Around the Neighborhood . . .

While perambulating around the perimeter of our subdivision the other morning, I happened across a huge, rectangular cardboard box sitting in front of someone’s house.

Fools! Everyone knows that when you’re fortunate enough to acquire a big flat screen television, you don’t announce it to the world—and especially burglars casing the neighborhood—by giving its cardboard box pride of place in front of your house. Why, these people made no effort whatsoever to deface the box and break it down into unrecognizable little pieces. In fact, the box looked as if it had never even been opened.

Then I drew closer to it, and saw that it wasn’t a TV at all, but merely one of those objects As Seen On TV.

I refer to one of the many manifestations of the Bioflex 2000 Ultimate X-Treme Digital Family Gym for Home, Office, or Still in Its Original Box Under the Bed. Or in this case, on the homeowner’s curb.

Ah yes. Beware the Ides of March. Two and a half months since New Year’s and the accompanying resolutions that are seldom kept. Clearly someone’s wife was sick of stubbing her toe on this box.

I see variations of this thousand dollar “Look! It’s also a clothes rack!” advertised in the weekly Flyer all the time, with any one of the following interchangeable qualifiers: Barely Used. Rarely Used. Never Used. Free—Please come and get it out of my house!

Okay, so this neighbor—or at least the lady of the house, who probably had to push this behemoth out the door herself even as her husband sat in his recliner, swilling his beer and bellowing she would do no such thing because he had every intention to start using it for at least an hour each day beginning next week—isn’t so foolish, after all. No one was going to steal this thing, let alone burgle their house. Not even Mr. Lucky, the King of Scavengers, would bother with this waste of titanium and polymers.

Not when I’m still stubbing my toe and hanging clothes on the one he has already.