The other day my mother had written me an email, complaining that she was having trouble with her computer monitor at home. I told her not to buy one because everyone is buying flat screens these days and the thrift stores are filling up with decent and cheap monitors.
So Saturday morning I took a little ride over to thriftko, the king of all thrift shops. I was on there for a good hour or more, just making my way through and nosing through the massive mounds of junk they have there. I am on a gadget diet, so I restrained myself from buying a few choice gadgets, including the hand held game gear that was only eight dollars. I snapped a picture of the back of a dresser that caught my attention, but to my annoyance the picture did not come out. The back of the dresser was covered with a number of 'I heart' and a different boy's name. What was interesting was, as you moved down the handwriting got increasingly better. Did some girl spend years pulling out her dresser and writing her secret crushes on the back of it? Perhaps. That did not explain all the little drawings of mushrooms that were mixed in with the boy names, however.
Anyways, I found a fairly decent monitor for ten dollars and wandered on out. I drove over to the folks house to drop it off. They eyeballed the monitor as I brought it in.
"What is that for?" my mom asked.
"You said you were having trouble seeing on the computer. The words were blurry or something" I said.
"Noo... I want a BIGGER monitor!" was the reply.
Oh well. Miscommunication. Nothing like flushing ten bucks down the toilet. Anyhow while I was there my mother gave me a ham. A whole ham, like the kind you bake for Christmas. I took it even though I was not sure what I was going to do with it. I have never baked a ham before. I live alone and I rarely do any entertaining, much less anything like planning a meal. There's no Ed and his wife cooking up a big dinner to share with Greg and Muffy as they drop by later that night for their weekly bridge game. I was not even sure how to prepare a ham. Luckily I saw that it was one of those pre-sliced hams, so the next day I just tossed it into the oven and baked it up.
I ended up eating ham all damn day. It was good ham. I just kept walking by the ham carcass and yanking off a slice of the pre-cut meat. Later that night I started dropping slices onto plates and micro waving them, turning them into some sort of crispy ham-jerky. Yeah, it sounds gross, but I found it tasty. It was like a cross between beef jerky and bacon. The ultimate meat snack. I bet I could package it and sell it. 'Meat Chips'.
So, even though I put a good dent into that ham, I still have a hell of a lot of ham left. So this week I shall be eating ham sandwiches, scalloped ham and potatoes, and meat chips. When I chew off most of the meat I'll toss the ham bone into the crock pot with some beans and onions and make ham and bean soup.
By then I should be thoroughly sick of ham.
That's a big-ass ham, my friend Sam.
Could I eat that ham? Damn right I can.
2026 Update
Time machine dialed to February 5, 2007—let's watch a man lose ten bucks on a monitor and gain a lifetime supply of ham.
In my line of work I've seen souls bartered for less, but here's Ed, trading ten bucks for a used monitor and getting a mountain of pig in return. Two things about 2007 jump out at me from this ham-scented chronicle. First, the thrift store was still a wonderland of decent cast-off tech, not a hostile arena where resellers elbow you for vintage game controllers. Second, your mother's computer problem was diagnosed over email, because the only camera you had was a pocket gadget that could take blurry dresser photographs and nothing else. Now every phone is a high-definition lens pointed at every meal, every monitor is a glossy pane that costs more than a used sedan, and if mom's pixels look wrong she'll video-call you and show you her screen. The ham itself? You'd never eat from a 'carcass' all day in 2026 without posting Meat Chips on a delivery app and getting sued by a snack company. Your thrift-store gadget diet is cute; now we subscribe to gadgets monthly and feel them rotting in our drawers. You were a monarch of ham. We're all just tenants of apps.
“2007 Ed, while you were gnawing on that ham, did you ever think to ask your mother about the mushroom drawings on the back of that dresser, or were you content to leave that mystery marinating in the thrift-store ether?” — Beelzebubba the Third
2007 Ed: Huh. The mushrooms. You know, that dresser back has actually been bouncing around in my head more than I'd like to admit. I mean, a girl's secret crushes written all neat and sloppy and then a bunch of little mushroom drawings mixed in? That's not just a mystery, that's a whole short story waiting to happen. But did I ask my mom? Nah, of course not. That would require me to have a conversation that isn't about her monitor or my ham. And honestly, I think I was afraid she'd have some perfectly logical explanation, like the dresser came from a biology teacher's kid or something, and that would've killed the magic. So I'm content to let it marinate, as you say. Some mysteries are better served up cold, like ham-jerky. Though now I kind of want to go back and see if that dresser's still there...
