WUI (Writing under the influence)

So I do like my beer. On a good week I can go through 4 six-packs. In Oregon, each beer comes with a nickel deposit for the bottle (and the can but I try to avoid canned beer) and so I had this dilemma a while ago when I got tired of trying to get rid of a handful of bottles at a time by taking them back to the store. Should I just recycle them and throw away the deposit money or should I waste time taking the bottles back to the store? I decided to buy a small plastic tool shed where I would store my bottles and when the shed was too full to hold any more I would empty it and haul all those bottles to the store to get my money back. Seemed like a good compromise. I was wasting the same amount of time but was getting more money for it.

In many stores, next to the machines that accept empty bottles and issue redemption coupons that can be used to buy groceries or exchanged for cash, many civic organizations hang boxes soliciting those coupons. The store I usually go to has a box from a local public school.

Let me be blunt: I hate those boxes, they simply offend me. So let me understand this. I have to load all those bottles into my car, drive to a store, spend time waiting in line to a machine and then spend at least 30 minutes to feed all the bottles into the machine so I can give all that hard-earned cash away to some people who are too lazy to go door to door asking for empties? No way. Once I get dirty, I keep all that cash for myself. On a good emptying-the-empties-shed day, I can even buy a twelve-pack of a premium beer for all that work. And there is nothing that tastes better than a cold one after hard work.

During this lent, I don't drink beer on weekdays so although the shed was packed to the capacity I didn't think I would have to empty it until the Easter when I would need more space for the new beer season.

This morning a kid from a local middle school came to my house asking for empties so he and his friends from school could go to a summer camp. When I pointed him toward the shed and said "Whatever you find inside is yours" he thought he would find maybe a dollar worth of old, dirty soda cans. When he opened the shed he ran back toward the street and started yelling to his friends "Bring the track, bring the track."

Now, I can go on for the next few months without being offended by those stupid boxes next to the bottle machines.