Trashy Magazine Overload

If there is one thing I always seem to be drowning in, it is magazines. It really does not matter what the subject is or who in the household originally ordered the things. Once the mags are inside the house they pile up higher than pancakes at a kid’s ‘sport stacking’ convention.

I instinctively know that they are not necessarily valuable, but there is something very pleasing in a stack of random magazines to read. I guess that is why the Kindle E-book reader and Ipad concept don’t really appeal to me. I want to be able to pick up a glossy covered rag and feel the ink come off on my fingers. I want to dog ear pages and fan the leaves to randomly choose an interesting tid-bit or two to read in-between some chore I have to do.

Probably my love for random magazines started when I was very young when houses actually had alleys behind them. I would always find something of interest in the alley trash bins and one house in particular always threw away stacks of National Geographic magazines. I would drag those home to leaf through and study maps, until my parents house was overflowing. Those perfect yellow rectangles with the lush, handsome photographic covers always felt like real treasure then, as they do now.

Most magazines around here originate from some type of reward or ‘bonus program’ for belonging to a certain auto club, being a member of a utility, organization, or charity. My daughter has made it her mission to utilize ‘Coca Cola’ points to buy fitness magazines. That way, In her mind, at least some tangible good can be had from drinking the ‘liquid evil’ of carbonated beverages. My folks contribute to my newsstand stockpile regularly too, with gifts of magazine subscriptions for birthdays, holidays, or special events. Or at least I THOUGHT they were gifts? Maybe it’s really PAYBACK for making them have to forklift out all those crates of trash bin mags when I was just a kid!