The Best $1.99 I Ever Spent

Yesterday, I went to Menard's. I had grand designs and plans. I, in my ongoing mission to make the basement into an inhabitable art-making space, wanted to block the view from my desk to the mess of pipes and ducts and things that make up our central heating unit. My thoughts for accomplishing this were along the lines of an elegant wood and rice-paper screen. Like this one:


The problem with screens like this one is that they cost a lot of money. Being poor, I can't afford to buy one. So, I thought to myself, hey, I use a power drill at work every day. A third of my job involves making four straight sticks of wood into one quadrilateral piece of wood. The rest involves placing something inside that quadrilateral space. I can handle this, thought I. I'll make my own rice-paper and wood room divider!

So, off to Menard's I went. After spending well nigh an hour wandering about, staring at different possible materials for the task, scribbling furtively on a notepad and adding things up on my cell phone's calculator, I realized that even making my own screen would be pricey. And, the final result would not be classy. I don't have any tools for finishing wood, so it would be raw and ugly. More importantly though, all the thin pieces of wood in all of Menard's are not straight. Not even remotely straight. Apparently thin pieces of wood in Menard's are meant to be nailed to thick, straight pieces of wood, and therein become straight themselves. As a support for a screen, nothing I saw before me would work.

Deflated, I left. What was I to do? Resign myself to staring at ugly pipes while trying to attain a state of artistic enlightenment? This hardly seemed fair, but there it was. I began to dismally steer my car out of the parking lot to go home, but then I thought, what about Target? Perhaps Target was having a rice-paper and wood room divider sale, right at that very moment.

Part of me wasn't inclined to continue the search. Have I mentioned that spending time in malls and other such retail havens is a fine-tuned form of hell for me? Well, it is. I hate consumerism, and the way people buy things they don't need. I hate that's it's actually cheaper for me to purchase something someone made in China than to make the same thing myself. But I do dislike looking at that central heating unit, so I rallied on. Already in a state of discomfort by the time I arrived at Target, the scene there (they are already selling Christmas things. Christmas!) did nothing to ease my suffering. I wandered more and more listlessly. Unable to find any screens, I found myself in the household goods sections, where I came across shower heads.

Our shower head has been dying slowly since we moved into our house. It dribbles out the sides and issues one thick, overwhelming gush of water from the center that always hits me right in the eye, all the time, no matter what. I have long disliked our shower head, but until recently never thought about getting a new one. When I looked at the shower heads in Target, I was a bit disappointed. They ranged from between $15-$50, and I didn't see a way to tell by looking whether or not they would work in our shower.

Then, I saw something. At first, I thought it must be a mistake. But I looked closer and saw the smallest, simplest shower-head among them sported a price-tag of only $1.99. By golly, thought I. Even I can afford $1.99. I seized one up, slightly rejuvenated, and continued on my way.

From there I proceeded to the curtain section, where I had the vast and staggering epiphany that a curtain would work just as well (perhaps better) than a screen to block out an ugly view, and cost a fraction of the money/time to buy/make.

Finally set on a definite course, I (painstakingly) made my selections and hurried on home. I hung the curtain with a pleasing result.




But the real triumph of the day is the shower head. It's amazing. First, it sprays water evenly over my entire body. Second, it uses less water, but manages to seem like it's using just the same amount as before. I love it. It makes me want to shower more than I usually do. I plan to continue loving it for as long as we live in this house. And for the life of me, I can't think of a single thing I purchased for so little which will give me such repetitive and long-lasting enjoyment.