Lower Your Total Clothing Bill With Undiscards!

I was passing by the Irish Famine Memorial at the corner of School and Washington Streets in Boston yesterday, a spot favored by what are no longer called "bums", perhaps because, by comparison to the statues of gaunt refugees from the potato blight in tattered clothes, the guys on the park benches don't look so bad.

Irish Famine Memorial, Boston

Out of the corner of my eye I spotted a preppy turquoise sweater lying on an otherwise-empty bench, apparently abandoned.

Not exactly like this, but close

I edged closer, looking out of the corner of my eye to see if anyone was watching.  The coast was clear.

I picked up the sweater and examined the tag; Jantzen--not a prestige label anymore, but a respectable brand nonetheless.  I looked around again; nobody was watching but the pigeons.

Still, I choked, and put it back down.  It was a tough decision, and one I didn't make lightly; you see, I'm a clothing re-cycler, or even tri-cycler, since I came thisclose to reusing a sweater that had probably been discarded by its second owner, a homeless guy.

"Did you see that god-awful turquoise number Butch was wearing?"

You can imagine what the guy went through after some charitable soul gave it to him.

"Hey Butch!" one of the other regulars in the little park might have yelled.  "You going to the Fletchers' cocktail party tonight?"

"Naw," another Gabby Hayes look-alike might say.  "He's got a charity gala to support Merlot for the Homeless, so we don't have to drink Thunderbird and Night Train anymore."

Times are tough, the social safety net has been shredded, and I'm here to help you avoid the fate of those guys on the bench.  You can lower your total clothing bill with undiscards.

An undiscard is an article of clothing that someone else has thrown away--not given to Goodwill or the Salvation Army.  They're free for the taking, and not subject to sales tax.  No fussing around with inconvenient coupons, no waiting for after-Christmas sales.  And you don't have to listen to a lecture on temperance to get them.

"Bad wine is the root of woe, better you should drink merlot!"

Where are the best places to find undiscards?  I hate to divulge my professional secrets, because it will only make competition for the best items tougher, but in the spirit of the coming season, I've decided to share them with you:

Public transportation vehicles:  I don't know what you people are doing in the back of the bus while I'm sitting up front drinking coffee and reading the paper, but whatever it is, keep it up!  Whenever I make my way to the door at the end of my commute by bus or train, I often see unclaimed articles of clothing.  I once found a nice Oxford cloth shirt on the 505 bus from Watertown, which I still wear.  The shirt, not the bus.

"Bitchin' cool!"

High-end clothing store wastebaskets:  I once found a Gap tie in a wastebasket in a Brooks Brothers dressing room.  I suppose what happened is that a callow youth with cheeks of tan decided at last to dress like a man, or something like that.  Maybe the kid got a gift certificate from his parents, threw off the flimsy Gap item and upgraded to Brooks Brothers.  Since I'm too cheap to pay Brooks Brothers prices for an item so inessential as a tie, I stuffed the Gap cravat in my pocket.  I wore it just the other day.

Swimming pool Lost-and-Found bins:  For the best selection of sizes and styles, wait until Labor Day, right before the pool closes for the season.

Warning:  Do not use the above list of helpful hints when you go Christmas shopping for your wife.  For some reason, women prefer newly-purchased, unworn clothing, especially when it comes to underwear and pajamas.

Walter "Wolfman" Washington

And then they have the nerve to complain when you buy something really essential, like a 3-CD boxed set of Walter "Wolfman" Washington's Greatest Hits.