These Are My Regrets, Volume Two

Credit: Holland Brown

This is the second volume of regrets where I’ll be chronicling various items I’ve collected, purchased, or stolen which I could certainly have done without. Walk with me.

Spike Lee

I drunkenly bought this on eBay in 2007 after watching She’s Gotta Have It for the first time a few weeks earlier. Isn’t it somewhat strange that Spike Lee cast his sister in his early films, and shot her doing nude scenes? I always thought that was a little weird, but maybe I just don’t understand the importance of art and family like Spike.

Where to begin with this piece of garbage. I’m still not entirely sure what it is, though I suspect it is a two-page ad from some late 80s magazine that has been cut out. I guess the original owner (lucky guy) decided to tape the ad to a manila folder, and then continue living his life for 20 years before deciding he’d press his luck peddling “antique memorabilia” on the internet.

I’m still not sure why I bought this. I don’t care about basketball. I don’t fetishize this particular era of New York, and I hate Michael Jordan (as a person). Have you guys ever read the story involving Michael Jordan, a jersey auction charity, and Chamillionaire? The “Republicans buy sneakers too”? Have you seen anything this man has worn since retiring? Thank god somebody else spent two decades assigning this man outfits to wear because he sucks at doing it himself. This regret spends its days next to a copy of Linus Pauling’s General Chemistry that I bought in a Long Island Barnes & Noble when I was 11 (when I still thought I might not be an idiot).

Rechargeable Batteries

This charger is going to be my last attempt to save money by re-charging AA/AAA batteries. It never happens. There are too many problems. The batteries run out very quickly. If they do run out all of a sudden, are you supposed to have charged a bunch of batteries just in case? Also, who cares about the environment? The world is circling the drain. You think not throwing a dozen batteries a year into a garbage can is going to make a difference? Does anybody even use these kinds of batteries anymore? CD players are old news, most people use their phone as a camera, etc. The only time I still use batteries is in a microcassette recorder I use for interviews, and for this giant keyboard remote that controls a Google TV box—another piece of garbage I regret buying.

Star Bucket

Extremely small regret. This star bucket sucks, and the star-shaped hole makes it worthless when it comes to holding my favorite liquids! WASTE OF A DOLLAR.

Most Books

I like to read books slightly more than the next guy, but I don’t see the point in buying them. Am I going to live in the same place the rest of my life? I don’t know many people who’d be impressed slowly going through all the books I keep on some giant shelf. Also, I’ve had three “waves” of books get lost, all of them during apartment moves. Most importantly, what’s the point of buying books when you can take them out from the library? In an attempt to capitalize on my infinite free time, I’ve been hanging around and thinking about the library. I found out just recently you can “hold” books by logging into the library online, and they’ll send the books from wherever it is to your local branch and then you go pick them up. Apparently everybody already knows this, which I find to be even more insane! Why didn’t anybody tell me? Now that I think of it, let’s keep this little secret between us.

"Homeless Man Steals My Library Card" Story

NOTE: This is not the actual card because it was stolen by a homeless man.

Seven years ago I was living in a high-ceilinged, windowless cave of a room in an apartment with two Israeli dudes. I remember checking out the apartment through Craigslist on April 21 (the day after 4/20, duh). The dude whose room I was supposed to move into kept talking about how high he got the night before and was insinuating it was a wild time (which I highly doubted). After I took the room, he CONTINUED LIVING IN THE APARTMENT FOR ALMOST SIX MONTHS. He would sleep on the living room sofa most nights. He came to New York City from Israel (after being in the Army) on 9/11 and COMPLETELY LOST HIS MIND. Anytime I would be hanging out with anybody and leave the room he would slip in and start pestering people with 9/11 truther conspiracies. I once walked in on homie asking my friend if she believed 9/11 was an "inside job." I was like “Yeah man. We all have the internet. Please move the fuck out of this apartment.”

That is all beside the point. One day I was drunkenly walking around the neighborhood when I ran into a homeless man I’d seen and given money to many times before. I decided to ask him to hang out with me in my apartment, which he agreed to, and we went up. "Hanging out" consisted of him telling me his (sad) story and me checking my email for an hour. I also gave him several pairs of neon-colored plastic sunglasses and like a dozen Mardi Gras bead chains I found a few days earlier, and we parted ways. Many months passed and I received a letter from some collection agency (Backstory: I signed up for, but never used, a New York Public Library Card so I could “have more cards in my wallet”). Apparently, I owed the NYPL more than two thousand dollars because I had taken out 25 expensive photography and art books and never returned them. Only later did I realize the homeless man had stolen my library card, taken out 25 of the most expensive books he could find, and (presumably) sold them. An incredible maneuver I cannot be angry about. Sir, I salute you.

Dapwell really enjoys thinking about the library. He's on Twitter — @dapwell