Almost Getting Notebooks for Life

In my high school, it was tradition at the end of the year to pass around a big trash bag and dump in all the things you didn't need anymore. Nine months worth of class notes, flash cards, worn out high lighters. The amount of paper thrown away each year blew my mind every time.

When it was my class's turn to go clean out our lockers, I saw some of my friends pulling out big armfuls of unused spiral notebooks and throwing them away! Of course, I stopped them. As a writer, it broke my heart to see perfectly good notebooks go to waste. My friend Liam, who was throwing out the biggest armful, insisted "They're used. Look!" He showed me each notebook, with the first few pages of almost all of them scribbled in for some reason or other. Sometimes there were actual class notes, but mostly the pages were covered with stick figure doodles. 

"I'll take them!" I chimed up. My family wasn't the richest around and couldn't always afford new school supplies at the beginning of the year. So we were always looking to salvage what we could. Liam seemed shocked by this but willing to help. As he promised "Alright. I'll put them by your locker if I find anymore. 

I went to my last class of the school year, and the day, satisfied with a job well done. And after class, went to my locker to collect my things. What I found... was two extra-large black trash bags FULL of spiral notebooks, loose leaf paper, folders, and binders. Liam had taken it upon himself to fish out all the unused paper from what had already been tossed. (Nothing dirty was on it since they were all just school supplies anyway.) Then he'd gone up and down the halls, to every student, and made the announcement that anything unused and unwanted went into HIS trash bags. I came home the proud owner of over 100 notebooks that day. 

Liam did the same thing the next year, and the next. And after my first year at University, he started off my summer with three bags full! I've since used almost all of those notebooks for various class and personal writing projects. Just goes to show, if you have a great friend, you may never need to buy notebooks again!