I have to admit, though when I felt the button pressing against me, I had to flip the blade around in my pocket. So, like an idiot, I pocketed the switchblade in the back of my jeans. It was how I got my brother his birthday present of a little confederate flag by quickly nabbing it before it landed in the bin. I was more moral only taking things that were destined for the bin. Quite frankly, most volunteers will pick a few things out and pocket it for themselves. Although the thoughts of reporting it to the manager and, therefore, the police came to mind, it isn’t always in the mind of volunteers to be the most law abiding. It was one of those, even in its iconic black colors. The kind that leather jacket wearing thugs would hold up to someone and, with a click of the button, flick out the blade, telling them to shut up. One of them being a bloody knife and other a Fireman Sam toy walkie talkie. Yet, in the mixture of old toys, there were a few oddities. Old toys that looked so old that they probably had lead paint on, things that looked like they were more capable of housing weapons than happy times with the children. Not bad junk, just a load of junk that most people wouldn’t want to have their children play with. When the shop got quiet, everyone having either left with what they came for or disappeared from sight, I brought the back onto the desk and poured it onto the table. Grabbing the carrier bag, I placed it behind the desk and served a few customers. I gladly accepted the bag, giving him an exaggerated smile and a thank you. His wrinkles looked like that of a caricature of an old man and his hair was a wispy white mound like he was a psychic living in a caravan. He was a hunched over old man, his appearance having more in common with a goblin than that of a person.
He did, however, have an old look about him. So, in this case, an older man donated a bag of toys. I just enjoyed seeing the wires and seeing how the toys worked. Someone could have told me that the audio was put onto the little boards by ways of witches, I would probably have to believe you. I didn’t know how the audio systems worked or how any of it really worked. I knew that, from a little motherboard, if a wire connected to a speaker, the toy should probably play music or speak a line. The Victorian way of cutting something open just to find out how it works was always in my mind. It wasn’t over scientific, it was more Victorian. So, as I was saying, I took apart toys and looked at their circuits, seeing how they functioned.
THE KITE GAME PUZZLE HOW TO
For the amount of time I spent researching improvised weaponry, reading through gunsmithing guides and learning how to make bombs for a cheap thrill of education, I would have thought I would have been put on some watchlist. I am rather surprised I was never talked to by a police officer or a government official. Digestive systems, walkie talkies, cars, bombs, rifles anything at all, I loved learning how they worked and how they were built. Name something and I would probably love to hear or see how it worked. I liked that in most things, knowing how they worked. Yet, I found an odd fascination in actually taking the things apart and seeing how they worked from the inside. If it didn’t, I would throw it in the bin. If it blinked, flickered or made a noise, I could price it and put it on the shelf. The only procedure I really had to do was pop open the battery compartment, take out any batteries and test the toy to see if it worked. By that I meant, I would take apart the toy itself, seeing how it worked inside. I have to admit, if someone was battery operated, I would usually do more than I needed to do. This is the story of a rattling inside a toy walkie talkie. Yet, this story is not about how I wiped shit off of high chairs, that is a horror story for another time. One wasn’t so bad but the other four might as well have been made of a mixture of saliva and baby food poo because you couldn’t see any of the material underneath it. I could count a number of high chairs I wiped dried fluids off of, it was five. It was the kind of stuff that was meant for the skips and tips, things that bin men should pick up, not volunteers who weren’t being paid any measly amount to wipe off dried feces from a baby’s high chair. Yet, every charity shop also has the same problem getting a whole load of random rubbish donated by someone with a plastered smile on their face. A number of fake walkie talkies, little RC cars and whatever other battery-operated bullshit I had to take apart with the help of my grubby fingers and a cheap screwdriver, I don’t wish to try and count that.
When you work in a charity shop, you quickly become friendly with screws, especially if it’s a children charity shop.