Think Of It As An Accessory For Eclectic Consumerism

“In my grandmother’s trunk,” the memory-provoking child’s game goes, “there is an aardvark, a bear, a cheesecake, a donkey … ” all the way through the alphabet, usually ending with a zebra.

My grandchildren would do it slightly differently: “In my grandmother’s trunk,” they would begin, “is an exercise machine, a vacuum cleaner, two pair of slacks, three library books … “

There would be no attention to alphabetical order, simply a statement of facts.

What sits, seeming endlessly, in the trunk of my wife’s automobile is stuff she intends to return to the store but just doesn’t get around to doing.

In this world of associations-for-everything, surely there must be a support group for her. Just last week, in response to a column I did on earthy dining as contrasted to elitist restaurant reviews, I received material from a group calling itself “The International Association of People Who Dine Over the Kitchen Sink.”

Indeed, there is an association for everything.

And while those who put off returning what they intend to return may edge close to the genus of procrastinators, for which there already is an association, I feel one dedicated specifically toward hesitant returners of unacceptable goods is a worthy cause.

I am the opposite. I won’t return a thing, even if it means throwing it into the garbage. (Surely, an association of sorts could be built around that condition as well.)

I’d just as soon eat dog meat than send it back with the waiter. I’ve got a pair of sneakers that don’t fit me - had them for weeks now - and won’t entertain any thought of returning them, even if I could recall where I bought them and where the receipt might be.

My wife doesn’t need a receipt. Somehow, she manages to return things without them and to get either full store credit, a refund or a swap. This is not to be scorned; it is an admirable trait.

I have seen her swoop through a department store and buy all manner of clothing to take home and try on. Usually, she rejects most of what she has brought home but waits until weeks after the bill has gone through the credit card company before returning the goods. This trait I do not admire.

Once the trunk is stuffed to overflowing, she declares a Return Day, moving resolutely from store to store, then showering me in the evening with the paperwork of myriad credit statements - which, after she leaves the room, I plop into the trash basket, as I have no other idea of what to do with it.

Every once in a while, I peer into the trunk of my wife’s car to see what it is that someday will go back to where it came from. It is for that express purpose of long-term storage that I believe my wife insisted on purchasing a car with a trunk big enough to hold two picnic tables and a boxed 50-inch television set.

Just yesterday, she returned a vacuum cleaner she had had for five weeks, a vacuum cleaner she got when she returned the exercise machine which had been in the trunk from October through May. She got the vacuum cleaner because she didn’t have a receipt for the exercise machine and the store insisted on a value-for-value swap.

Are you following this?

When she returned the vacuum cleaner, however, she was given a choice: something else of comparable value or cash minus $35 for all the trouble we caused them. She chose cash, as there are other things in the house she wants to put in the trunk for eventual return.

That is the purpose of an automobile trunk, isn’t it?

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The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Howard Kleinberg Cox News Service