I Can't Have Nice Things

On Saturday morning, I woke up feeling oddly refreshed and perky. What a difference a non-hangover makes, eh folks?

After watching TV for a short while in the dark hovel that is our apartment, I realized I better put this energy to good use before the couch sucks me in and I lose my urge to shower and communicate with the outside world.

But what to do...what to do. Oh! Of course! I must spend money on stuff!

So Devin (the boyfriend) and I made our way to Target. After buying a new mop, broom, an enormous box of cat litter and an even more enormous bag of cat food, we moved on to housewares for the apartment. For as long as I've been out of college, I've had in my head that I want my apartment to look like an actual grown up's apartment. Yet despite my forbiddance of unframed posters and mismatched bedding, I have never been able to achieve this.

But I made some small strides while at Target. We bought a paper towel rack. Also, some new glasses, which all match one another, to replace the embarrassing assortment previously filling our cupboards: plastic cups with faded Baja Fresh and Subway logos, two glasses with the playboy bunny logo inhereted from our neighbor, a beer stein with a plaque that says "James," leftover from a previous roommate, and a few pint glasses featuring a high school photo of Devin's cousin.

Feeling quite unstoppable, we then moved on to Bed, Bath & Beyond, where, much to our dismay, the only trash cans they sell are made by Simple Human and cost $100. Designer trash cans. Well, fuck me.

While Devin sampled the massage chair for 20 minutes, I picked out new pillows and a mattress cover. And, yes, I was terribly excited about my new bedding, but I was over-the- moon excited about the new hamper! It was wicker! And pretty! And had dual compartments for sorting clothes into lights and darks...or hot and cold...oh the choices! Certainly this glorious new hamper would at last usher me into proper adulthood, as, logically, the reason I only do my laundry once a month is because my old hamper is so ugly.

Cut to several hours later. Most of the shopping bags are unpacked. We've been cleaning the apartment to make way for our cool new things. I'm in the bedroom, trying to find mates for all our socks, when Devin walks in.

D: Did the hamper make it in here?
Me: Uh.
D: I don't see it with this stuff.
Me: I guess it's in the car.
D: I don't remember putting it in the car.
Me: Well...
D: Did it make it out of the store?
Me: I remember you saying it was really heavy. So yeah.

So he leaves to see if it has indeed been left in the car. While he's gone, an awful thought pops into my head. And when he returns to the apartment without my lovely hamper, I share this awful thought.

Me: Do you remember when we were backing out of the parking spot at the mall. There was this noise?
D: Yeah like we hit something.

Pause.
My eyelids: Blink blink. Blink blink.

D: We ran over the hamper.

Do you see? I just can't have nice things!

[If you're wondering how we could have run over a hamper without noticing, you should know that it was folded down into a very flat package that was only a few inches thick.]

So yesterday during my lunch break, I drove back to BB&B, armed with my receipt. My plan was to go to customer service and say, "Um, I bought all this stuff on Saturday, but when I got home, no hamper! It's the weirdest thing. Please help me."

And then, in case the cashier responded with, "How interesting. We found a totally crushed and destroyed hamper in the parking garage" I would respond with, "HaHA! Isn't that something? So THAT's what happened...heh" and hope they take pity on me for being so special.

And if that didn't work, I'd grab a new hamper and make a run for it.

When I walked back into the store, before heading to the customer service desk, I went over to display of the hampers to see if there was one there that looked like it may have been run over by a Volkswagon. And guess what. There was! I took pictures of the damage with my super shitty cellphone's super shitty camera, so I'm sorry if they don't look like anything. (Also, while I was crouched on the floor taking the pictures, two different employees came over and asked if I was ok.)




Ok, I know what you're thinking. "Shouldn't that be more fucked up if it got run over by a car?" I thought the same thing. I was expecting something more like this:

But I told my coworker about it and he says that if you run over something flat, the only busted parts are at either end. And that's exactly what happened here, as you can see.

Anyway, they let me pick out a new hamper (I obviously didn't take the busted one. Suckers!) and everything was fine. But now I can't help but wonder if that was my runover hamper on display.

Does anyone want to volunteer to go to the Bed Bath and Beyond in Burbank, find an employee, point to the hamper and ask, "Excuse me, did someone run over this? "