When you roam the streets of Rome, you see the nasoni, the “big noses”. They’re the free, potable water fountains, and there are more than 2,000 across the city. Here in the U.S., people willingly pay for water. Some people go to great lengths to pay. They buy commercial-sized water dispensers for their homes, or they drive to Whole Foods in their Land Rover Defenders and load their trunks with bottled water with fancy labels from faraway places. These are the same people who pay for dirt and oxygen and Nickelback tickets. To be clear, I’ve made countless frivolous, unnecessary and regrettable purchases over my life, so excuse me while I dismount from my high horse.
While sipping a bottle of my favorite German beer, I read a conversation between New York Times columnists Gail Collins and Bret Stephens. “Surely there are better ways to pass an autumn afternoon in a state renowned for its foliage,” you insist. But bear with me. With respect to government spending, Stephens believes that return on investment is the metric that matters. “Valid point,” I thought. Which led me to think more. “Do my returns exceed my investments?” The answer isn’t straightforward. My results are mixed.
Gum
The unearned penny I placed in the coin mechanism of the gumball machine in the vestibule of the Sears store in 1973 returned all of the machine’s contents. Most of the gum cascaded into my child-sized purse, which I had quickly positioned to collect the unexpected bounty, but some also spilled across the heavily-trafficked vinyl tile flooring. I was the fortunate child who fortuitously turned the crank on a broken machine. Today, if you can even find a machine, a single gumball will cost you 25¢.
Botox
Other than appearing less angry for a few months at a time, I have nothing to show for the $1,000 or so that I spent on Botox treatments over the past decade to erase the two vertical lines between my eyes. In a best-case scenario, my nurse laughed all the way to her credit union. I earned those lines after suffering a raft of outrages:
Wiping other women’s pee from public toilet seats.
Finding empty boxes in the pantry.
Not finding things where I left them.
Nearly hitting cyclists who roll the wrong way down the road.
Starting my car, only to hear the classical music radio station that my husband left blaring.
How annoyed do I have a right to be, though? I’m the one at stoplights at whom you scowl because she blasts her car stereo with the windows down.
Sports
I’ve been cycling since I was a kid. I love any sport that involves speed or makes me feel like I’m flying—skateboarding, rollerblading and skiing included. I found my Trek road bike on Facebook marketplace for $1,800, a 50% discount of the sticker price. Strava tells me that I’ve pedaled over 4,000 miles since I bought the bike. That’s 45¢ per mile for a killer set of quads, the agony of 5 mph climbs and the thrill of 40 mph descents over the mountains of New Hampshire.
Fifteen years ago, I paid $500 for a pair of skis, bindings and boots at a swap sale hosted in a high school cafeteria. Skiing draws me outdoors in a season when I’d otherwise be buried under wool blankets while streaming Netflix. Zigzagging down trails at high speed forces me to be present in the moment. But skiing is also the reason I have a dead man’s ligament and scars on my left knee after I tore my ACL and underwent surgery because I was doing tricks in the terrain park at Crotched Mountain.
Microwaves
The 23-year-old microwave that I picked up for free from a Unitarian church administrator who no longer wanted it sits at work in my office, which is occupied 24/7. It has nuked our meals, drinks and snacks for fourteen years without interruption. Over that same period of time, I’ve replaced the microwave in my home kitchen no fewer than three times.
Refrigerators
There’s the $700 refrigerator we bought this summer to replace the 8-year-old refrigerator that died in a kitchen with no AC during Earth’s hottest July on record. I’m not entirely surprised that it broke after a handful of uses. Come to find out, everyone else in the world except us knows you can’t get a decent refrigerator unless you spend north of $1,000. Well, fuck my ignorance.
At first, opening the refrigerator doors was akin to breaking the surface tension on a bottle of ketchup. After a few days of openings and closings, the rubber strips came unglued. So did I.
While we slumbered, the seals separated themselves from the doors, resigning in premature defeat, like Skims shapewear during a night of heavy partying. Opening the freezer revealed enough frost and icicles to mimic a scene from one of those mawkish Hallmark Channel Christmas specials which the staff at my nail salon insists on watching even when it isn’t December.
The lemon we bought at the appliance store led me to the logical conclusion that this country has transitioned to Spätkapitalismus or “late capitalism”, as coined by the German economist Werner Sombart. The U.S. manufacturing industry is flirting with the origin point of a Cartesian coordinate system where the x-axis represents the lowering cost of production, and the y-axis illustrates the waning number of years days a durable good works.
But what do I know? I married a guy who majored in economics, yet I fell asleep at a desk while taking an economics exam in college. I had answered all the multiple choice questions but lowered my head, pencil and eyelids after I saw the section of essay questions that would require more skill than simply circling a random letter. I only opened my eyes after my professor tapped me on the shoulder. Lesson: cramming all night for a test ensures a low ROI.
Engagement Ring
The harsh light in the ceiling fixture glared. A tapestry of stains fouled the carpet. The TV squawked in the upstairs room. Part of the way through a movie, I got engaged on the bed in a musty room at a Motel 6 in Memphis. The proposal caught me off-guard in the most romantic way as my boyfriend produced an emerald cut diamond ring. I’m certain my husband’s ROI is greater than 100% because I’m pretty awesome.
I retold a version of that story twice this month. I shared the story with my hair stylist who, before I even told her where at the hotel the proposal took place, assumed it was the parking lot. “I’m not a whore,” I protested, as she slathered brown dye on my gray roots. I had barely finished my story when she one-upped me by sharing that a friend of a friend recently asked a woman to marry him while they were dining at Applebee’s in Hooksett, which is wayyyyyyy worse because you can’t have sex there after he puts the ring on your finger.
I’m an English language tutor for a Ukrainian woman who just returned from a trip to Arizona with her boyfriend who proposed to her on a slab of limestone at the RIM OF THE GRAND CANYON. When I recited my story after listening to hers, I think I mortified and confused her in equal measure. I’m not even sure if she understood the cultural significance of a Motel 6.
Shortly after the tutoring session ended, I hopped in the back seat of an SUV for a 15-hour road trip with a couple of friends. We drove all night and half of the following day to the Isle of Palms in South Carolina to attend the destination wedding of my best friend’s son. The ceremony played out on a lawn overlooking the Atlantic. Minutes before, we caught sight of a pod of dolphins somersaulting near the shore, a good omen. The pod reminded me of the sculpture of a dolphin in one painting of Jean-Honoré Fragonard’s masterpiece, Progress of Love, where the dolphin represents Jupiter’s agent in a love affair, a symbol of expectant desire.
I had Carolyn Bessette’s minimalist wedding dress in mind when I went shopping, but finding an affordable option that was cut on the bias would prove elusive. The $200 I paid for a champagne-colored, polyester Jessica McClintock dress at a Mississippi department store returned a marriage that’s entering its 27th year. Our union has produced two admirable daughters plus tax breaks, cost sharing and access to free legal consultations by virtue of having married an attorney.
Substack
I’m fairly new to writing, and it’s your encouragement that keeps me typing. I’m grateful for each one of you. Thank you for inviting me into your inbox. Thank you for paying me to write. As I see my subscription numbers climb, I feel like a Girl Scout racking up sales at a flimsy folding table outside a Home Depot where everyone I meet suddenly has cookie cravings. I hope the value of your investment in me is greater than the initial cost. If it doesn’t yet feel that way, multiply the result by 100.
Laughs
I gotta bounce. I’m off to watch Bill Burr deliver a truckload of politically-incorrect humor. My friend got us the tickets. I’m buying the dinner.
So happy to be a member of your “fan club”, definitely worth my small investment! Absolutely love reading your posts, I see some of myself in them, which is a bit concerning....
Excellent post. New to writing? You obviously come to it with inherent talent.