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Captain Ameritrash
United States
Statesboro
Georgia
I am not Emperor Palpatine. In other news, You Are BANISHED!!!
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Edited to change the title and correct a couple of typos. Previously posted as Crimes Against Plastic II: Electric Boogaloo - Oh, The Humanity
A little background about Trash: I am a thrifter. I have been a thrifter for most of my life. Over the past 30 or so years, I have thrifted practically every kind of thing that can be thrifted: costume pieces, casual and work clothes, furniture, housewares, sporting goods, books, small electronics, props, houseparts, toys and boardgames. I live for the thrill of the hunt, and I crave the sweet release of endorphins when a major find is made. I have never met a yard sale, consignment shop, flea market, thrift store, or curbside pile of junk that I didn't like. Until today, that is.
A little background about The Hellmouth (aka Statesboro, GA): We have one Goodwill, and two privately owned thrift/consignment shops which are never open and only ever carry church dresses for women in their 70's anyway. The boardgame thrifting here is not good. For a veteran thrifter like myself, living in The Hellmouth can be very frustrating sometimes. However, now and then a decent game can be found, even here. Not great games, and certainly not many "gamer's games" ever, but decent. I hit the Goodwill four or five times a week, and sometimes I find something worth picking up.
A couple of weeks ago, my Goodwill took down their toy area in favor of more clothes racks. I was a little disappointed, but since the boardgames are always shelved with the books, I figured it was no big deal. Then I thought about it a little more, and I started to wonder what they were going to do with all the toys that got donated. I hoped that they wouldn't trash them. Maybe they'd send the toys to the nearest Goodwill Outlet, wherever that is. Then I began to wonder whether the employees would make a distinction between actual toys and my beloved plastic-heavy Ameritrash games. You see where this is going.
In spite of my growing unease, by sheer force of will I managed to restrain myself from walking around to the back of the store and checking the dumpster. As much as I wanted to know, I didn't want to know, you know? Today that changed.
I was checking the shelves and passing on the umpteenth copy of Trivial Pursuit - Genus Edition, Wheel of Fortune, 2nd edition, and the DVD-enabled SNL Trivial Pursuit when my wife called. Since I didn't want to be that guy who stands in the store shouting into his cell phone (I hate that guy), I stepped outside to take the call. As I chatted with my wife, I strolled aimlessly around the building, where I got my first look at the enormous compactor/baler that lives next to the loading dock. And that's all she wrote. My resolve melted like a Peep in the microwave. I had to look inside.
As soon as my phone call ended, I went and got a better look. The machine was locked up tight, but there was a gap between the compactor itself and the chute coming out of the Goodwill building. I peered into the compactor through the gap, and sure enough, perched on top of an old nylon duffel bag and a ruptured Hefty bag full of mangy stuffed animals, there was a box I recognized. It was Jenga. I resolved to rescue it. I'm not a huge Jenga fan, but it would make a good story for the thrift guild geeklist, and maybe I could use it to play Dread, or make a dice tower or something.
Luckily, the gap was just big enough to get my arm inside, and the Jenga box was close enough to reach with the tips of my fingers. Unluckily, the bottom flap of the box was not sealed, and as soon as I lifted the box up from its Hefty bag nest, all of the blocks clattered to the floor of the compactor, out of my reach.
Oh, well. No big loss, right? I was getting ready to walk away, when something made me look inside one more time. I squinted into the darkness, and that's when I saw it. A brown, roughly triangular plastic shape with hexagonal lines embossed into it. I was looking at the back of a Heroscape terrain piece. One of the large ones. Then I saw another one, and another. Then some smaller terrain became visible, and one turn marker. And barely visible behind an old curling iron, one single sparkly blue water tile. And they were all way too far away to grab.
I must have walked around and around the compactor fifty times, trying to figure out how to get it open. I checked the toolbox in my truck to see if there was anything I could snag the pieces with. I even considered going back into the Goodwill and buying something, anything that I could use to rescue the poor bits.
Then I got into my truck and drove home.
I was absolutely appalled. There were at least two perfectly good games in that compactor waiting to be destroyed, simply because the Goodwill decided not to dedicate any shelf space to "toys". One of the games is now out of print, and appreciating in value every day. And by this time tomorrow, it'll be a pile of brown plastic splinters embedded in a block of trash. It's a damn shame.
So, from here on out if I have games that I don't want to keep for some reason, I may give them away to friends, or to someone on the "Thrifting for you" geeklist, or I may seed them in my local coffeehouse, or part them out to others who need replacement bits. But I will never donate a game to a thrift store again.
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I am not Emperor Palpatine. In other news, You Are BANISHED!!!
