Unlike average college students, I'm not very frugal. This is not to say that I'm out blowing my tuition loans on daily doses of cheap whiskey and cigarettes, but I have a tendency to overindulge when it comes to online shopping and the deceiving invisible carts that magically fill up so easily. If you're not convinced, have a conversation with my mother.
But regardless of my anti-penny-pincher habits, there are always a few items that I never seem to pay for. Case in point—gum. Do you remember the last time you bought gum? I don't. It's just always there—in my backpack, lying half-open on the bottom of my purse, on the kitchen counter in its unofficial designated spot and sometimes even in that random drawer I haven't opened for three and a half months.
People always give me gum. It's not like I'm a gum enthusiast or a connoisseur of brands and flavors. And it's not that I even really like gum. But nonetheless the gum gifts continue. Last Christmas, my mom stuffed my stocking with a tin of Juicy Fruit. Once, as a thank you, a friend sent me a Doublemint-themed gift basket. Insignificant as it may seem, I was even given a half-used package of Orbit on my birthday as a consolatory gift after having been stuck in the library all night. All this frickin' gum adds up, people!
Then there's fountain soda. Nobody pays for fountain soda. And if they do, they're not thinking rationally. Whenever I'm at a restaurant with self-serve beverage fountains, I simply ask for a water cup, wait until the cashier goes back to picking his nose and then I fill the cup full with my pop of choice, Diet Coke [the be-all, end-all of pops and life in general. (Yeah, it's pop. Not soda. Deal with it)]. You see what I just did there? That was a parenthesis within a parenthesis, almost like a dream within a dream. Mind=BLOWN.
Now, I know what some of you moral, by-the-book bitches are thinking. ""Ugh, what a thief! That deceitful, immoral wench steals watered-down soda right out from under the virtuous noses of these fast-food chains."" But luckily all my friends are immoral too, so I rarely hear theft accusations more often than I hear incessant guilty laughter.
And you can't forget sunglasses! I'm always hesitant to pay for sunglasses, and that stems from my lousy track record of misplacing them. Why would I pay $60 for a designer piece of plastic that I'm inevitably going to throw in my bag all willy-nilly? They're either going to get scratched to the point where I'll think it's raining whenever I'm wearing them or I forget they're on my head when I get on the Power Tower at the state fair (True story. There's no coming back from a 300-foot fall).
But the good thing about sunglasses is that the world is peppered with absent minded dumbasses like me. Remember that time you were devastated after you lost your $200 Burberry aviators? They're sitting in my ""found"" box in my room. Merry October to me! How about mom's vintage shades from 1982 that I found after scavenging the Goodwill pile? Score! Thank goodness my hoarder tendencies saved that find from the recesses of retail hell.
Sunglasses, fountain pop and gum are just a few of the things I choose not to spend money on. But that's not to mention the items that I paid for once and am miraculously still using. For example, I've had the same dish soap in my kitchen for four years, and the bottle is still half full (or half empty, depending on my mood). Don't get me wrong—I'm a clean person. I do dishes at least once a week, and as I've blatantly pointed out, I'm not frugal. It's a total mindfuck, but I'm definitely not complaining.
If I wasn't deathly afraid of them, I would venture to guess that a gremlin is filling up my soap dispenser every week and leaving trails of half-opened gum around my apartment. Little old Gizmo has probably played a part in my vast collection of pilfered sunglasses, too. But gremlins freak me out, so let's not talk about them anymore.
