I know that personally, I often don’t give myself enough credit. Many times I’ll think I’ve done something quite wrong and try to correct it, only to find out I was right the first time. Today was one of those days.

I’ve recently had to purchase books for some summer classes I’ve been taking. When you purchase these books, the bookstore gives you a receipt. I need this receipt to give to my parents, who in turn give me the monetary value printed on said receipts. It’s a great system.

Where the system falters, however, is that it assumes I am a responsible enough person to keep all my receipts. There’s always a catch.

So today I was talking with my Dad about dinner arrangements. This dinner is to be an occasion where my Dad and I will make a trade: receipts for a cheque. Cheques mean real money, which means real alcohol and drugs. Once again, great system.

While during my most recent purchase I was smart enough to stow away my receipt, my previous book-buying adventure left me wondering as to the whereabouts of my precious slip of paper.

The last place I remembered placing this paper was in my backpack…and the last time I remember taking pieces of paper out of my backpack I was putting them into the garbage.

Damn.

But luckily for me, I’m so lazy that I rarely empty my garbage, providing me with the slim possibility that somewhere in the depths of a bin I dare not mention, my receipt could be resting atop a moldy apple-core. Score.

So this is where I found myself today, rummaging through my own garbage bin. I like to think of it as a trip down two-week old and moldy memory lane. And I emphasize moldy.

I pulled things out of this garbage that I never knew existed. There were old pizza boxes that I somehow managed to fold into my small pit of despair, along with post-it notes, old credit card statements and two extremely moldy apples. Actually, I think there was just mold. Any semblance of apple had left long ago.

But then, there was other stuff that was kind of neat to find, in a dumpster-diving way. I found old wax chunks from the time my candle spilt onto my glass bedside table, and the plastic box to my monster ipod fm-transmitter. That thing is fucking awesome!

Unfortunately for me, elbow deep in a moldy abyss, I failed to find anything that remotely resembled a UBC bookstore receipt. My quest to the depths of dirt had failed and all I was left with was sticky hands and the idea that maybe I should clean out my garbage more often.

So as I admitted defeat, thinking about the dwindling amount of booze and drugs I wasn’t going to be able to buy I slipped my lonely receipt into my wallet… only to find the other one already fucking there.

Besides thinking to myself: “Why the hell didn’t you check there first!” I also thought: ”You fucking moron.”

Maybe I give myself too much credit after all.