Try Me

I have this particular curse. I’ve had it all my life (my mom has it too, so it must be genetic) and I married a man with the same curse, so my kids have no shot at all of avoiding it.

What curse?

Once I have decided I like something – a product, a television show – it immediately goes on some cosmic list to be discontinued or cancelled. I have even killed car models!

In my lifetime, three times I have liked my car model enough to buy it twice in a row but when it came time to get a new car again found that that line had been discontinued (sorry, General Motors).

I have that effect on television shows too. If I watch a new show and decide that I like it enough to neglect one of my old standards in the same time slot, that’s pretty much a guarantee it won’t be picked up for a second season – if it even lasts a full season. (For those of you wondering what happened to Sports Night, Dead Like Me, Firefly, Jouneyman, Thank God You're Here or Accidentally On Purpose, sorry ... that was me)
For the last 10 years, my curse has really targeted my hair products. It’s so long ago that I don’t remember the Genesis product it started with, but it was discontinued and I had to find a replacement before the stock I scooped up from every drugstore in town ran out.

Eventually I would find something that works and within 8 – 15 months it will go off the market and again I’d be back to a new search. I’ve kind of gotten used to it at this point, but here’s the part I feel bad about….

In my quest to find just the right replacement product, I end up with bottles and bottles of perfectly good (sometimes expensive) hair products that have been used once so I can’t return them to the store, but I’ve only used them once so I don’t want to throw them away. They may not be right for me, but they could be perfect for someone else.

I’d love to put them all in a basket somewhere with a big sign that says “Try Me” or “Free to a good home” so someone could get use out of them and they’d stop taking up room under my sink.

I’d add to that basket the 20 tubes of lipstick that looked perfect in the store (through the closed, plastic sealed packaging with a color dot on the bottom that looks nothing like the color inside) but looked horrible on, once I got it home. Again – used once, sitting in a box… exiled to the island of misfit cosmetics.

I’m I alone here? Do you have your own stash? What would you do with your perfectly good rejects?