It finally came! Actually, I hadn't exactly been waiting for it to come, but when my roommate's March 30, 1981 edition of the Chicago Tribune arrived today, I was excited.
I jumped around a little bit, and gave some hugs, and my reaction was more sincere than just about anything I've done all week. Sometimes you just need something to be excited about.
The paper was from the day Ronald Reagan was shot, and its top story claimed that Reagan was unharmed. The top story was all wrong, and the paper was a piece of history. It was a $5 piece of history fresh off eBay.
\I bid on some Milwaukee newspapers and got outbid,"" my roommate had said, and I tried to imagine the kind of people who get into on-line bidding wars over dusty old newspapers. I guess my roommate is one of them.
As it turns out, he also got into a war of sorts over two copies of the final edition of the Chicago Daily News, and we should be getting those some time in the next week'my roommate claims that's all he's bid on for now.
For now, he can be satisfied with 21-year-old advertisements and faded photos of public figures who have been long since forgotten about. I guess there is some intrigue in that.
Personally, I've only bid on eBay one time, and I ended up with a $7 burned copy of the outtakes of Bob Dylan's ""The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan."" It wasn't quite what I'd bid on.
According to the on-line description, I was bidding on an authentic bootleg CD, and I really didn't even want that. I just wanted to see what the big deal was about eBay, and I learned it wasn't the kind of big deal I wanted to put any more time or money into.
eBay is great if you're into material possessions, and I think I've read too much Thoreau, but I don't know. I read Thoreau this week for a class, and for the first time in my life I didn't like him.
I read Thoreau and thought about eBay and about the acquiring of wealth and about the creating of waste, and I decided Thoreau didn't know my roommate.
If buying old newspapers or bobble-head dolls or whatever you can find on eBay makes you happy, then that's great. I know I was excited to get the old newspaper, but I also know I would have been twice as excited to have been the guy who sold it.
I think Thoreau would have liked to have been the guy who sold the paper too, and I think he would have liked selling on eBay in general. He could have gotten rid of all the crap he didn't need, and maybe someday I'll try selling some of my stuff on eBay, but for now I have a column instead.
For now I'm just sitting at my computer waiting for the e-mails to come in because if you ask, I'll burn you a copy of any of my favorite CDs for just $7. That's seven, plus a few more for shipping and handling.
andrewmiller@students.wisc.edu
