A while ago I decided to buy everything, or almost everything, second-hand.

Santa Claus here at home goes to Vinted, Father and Mother Years too, and the clothes we wear also come from other people. Over time I became better and better at the negotiation game. “What? A pair of pants 5€? I offer 3.5€.” and I’m very proud of every penny I save.

I explained to my children how polluting the planet it is to be buying new clothes all the time, and to make it exciting (perhaps not very successful) I made them imagine the great adventures that their clothes lived while belonging to other people. Anyone who is from the “Four friends and a pair of pants” generation knows where I was inspired.

Well, so far so good (or all bad for people like my mother who are disgusted with used things), I teach my children a little about circular economy and I still save money. It could just be a chronicle like this, boasting of being a good citizen and a cheapskate from birth, but no. This chronicle serves to expose a problem that arose when I joined this new lifestyle, if we can call it that.

I know that I am not the only one suffering from this pathology because I have seen the same happen to other people like me, jeovinted witnesses. Let me explain: if someone comments on something I’ve been wearing, I stop controlling my own speech, and the same sentence always comes out (only the value changes): “Thank you. €10 at Vinted.” Who is this marketer who appropriates my body? Where does it come from? The second problem is that I rarely stop at the first. What follows is often a speech about the wonders of that site: “Never bought anything there? That has everything. My husband came from there too. It already had some use, but it came well packed in a black plastic bag, really difficult to tear” (the jeovinteds will understand).

My relationship with this site, however, started out quite badly. My eldest son devours books faster than his mother, which has some impact on our family budget. So I decided to search the internet for the second-hand books he was reading. I found one for 4€ (the marketer is back) and ordered it to come.

When the order arrived at the locker, around February 13th (it may seem like irrelevant information but you will see that it is not) it came in a cardboard box. I gave it to my son to open, and went to deal with something else.

I then hear my husband shouting from the living room “Why did you buy this?”, “What do you mean? It’s just The Diary of a Wimpy Kid,” I thought. When I arrived at the living room my son
was demanding the box with his book and my husband holding it over his head so the boy could not touch it. My husband looked at me with an anguished and incredulous look as he handed me the box and asked “Whyêê?”. What was inside was not The Diary of a Wimpy Kid, but pills to promote erection and some colored condoms with some other function that I didn’t get to explore. Well, the only similarity between the two products I won’t be the one to say because it’s too cheesy, think about it if you want.

I called several phone numbers to try to resolve the situation, but to no avail. After a few days I took the box to the post office and explained to the lady what had happened, showing her what I had received. “Well, really the other person had already reported the exchange.” I imagined him in a bed, with someone next to him sleeping (he just could), and him with a little light reading Greg’s adventures in elementary school.

“Don’t worry, we’ll take care of everything,” the CTT lady assured me. “Aaahhh, wait a minute,” he said, finishing with a sigh. “What? Don’t tell me I’m going to have to walk around with the damn pills from one side to the other again?”, I thought already accusing frustration. She looks at me and says with a desolate look “What a bummer. It’s just that you won’t get this in time for Valentine’s Day.”