PHOTO PROMPT © Claire Sheldon
TANSTAAFL – Urban Myth
Save all your pop-can tabs. Someone will donate a power wheelchair.
Mr. Cynicism said, “Who? Why?”
Like a child’s paper-clip necklace, I pulled it apart, one link at a time. Daughter said, “Mom told me. Didn’t she mention it to you?” The wife named a sister. That sister blamed an older sister. She said the yenta was a bowling team member.
Bowler identified a man in her trailer park. “He’s got his; we’re trying for another.” Wheelchair man nailed them, upside down, to slabs of plywood, and sold them to supplement his meager disability allowance. “They’re great muddy shoe scrapers.”
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TANSTAAFL is a term credited to the author, Robert A. Heinlein. It cynically/realistically means, There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.
The trailer park man’s wheelchair was not donated. It had been supplied by the government. He was not aware of any group giving away free wheelchairs. Pop-can tabs are pure aluminum. There was a group who collected entire aluminum cans, crushed them and turned them in for rebate at the scrap dealer. The money was added to a fund which aided handicapped people.
BELIEF is when Hope is substituted for Facts.
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Go to Rochelle’s Addicted to Purple site and use her Wednesday photo as a prompt to write a complete 100 word story.
