Packrat? Your mental disorder is ready to pay off
If I told you the alarm on my 15-year-old, Wal-Mart-variety digital clock began bleating at 2:15 in the morning, you'd probably assume one of two things: (1) The electricity had flickered sometime during the night and reset the timepiece, throwing it off from the hour I had intended to arise, or (2) I was taking a disco nap, to rest up for a fashionably late arrival to a warehouse party.
But my neighborhood hadn't suffered a power outage, and anyone who knows me could attest that you'd probably spot me in a police line-up before you'd find me on a dance floor.
Nonetheless, there I was, stumbling out of bed, pulling on a pair of sweatpants and plodding back to my desk to sit in front of my computer — yes, at 2:15 a.m. I had only five or 10 minutes to spare.
I was awake because of a poster. More specifically, a gargantuan black-and-white Johnny Cash promotional poster.
The guy I was dating at the time had stumbled across this oversized portrait of the Man in Black almost by accident.
Though my ex was certainly no stranger to the Internet — he had a DSL Internet connection and maintained his own blog — he had yet to join the ranks on eBay. But one afternoon he had browsed the site on a whim and came across this representation of Cash, and he wanted it, bad.
The seller was restricting first-time eBayers from the auction, and my ex was slightly uncertain about the whole process anyway, so I offered to bid on his behalf.
At that time, I wasn't aware of the software that automates sniping (bidding at the last minute of an auction).
That's why I wound up waiting and watching, bleary-eyed, in the closing seconds of the auction shortly before 2:30 a.m.
I won Johnny for around $50.
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