Postage Stamps     At this point, it is almost a cliché to compare being a hardware store lackey, earning the bare minimum the government will allow your employer to pay you, to the delicate art of ballet. But, at the risk of boring my audience, I'll have to do it one last time, if only for the art's sake.     If being a minimally paid hardware store dogsbody is to perform a ballet, then each task of the job may be likened to a different rigor of the dance. Sweeping the floor becomes the gentle repetition of a glissade. Spending a half an hour helping a customer find thirteen cents worth of lock washers blossoms into a beautiful pas de deux. The restocking of toilet flanges is a joyful burst of energy, a grande jeté exploding across the particle board stage. But the most fundamental movement, the building block of the dance, the plié, must be reserved for the subtle act of taking the cardboard out back to be recycled. In no way as easy as it appears, each box of Drãno Max Gel must be first disassembled, pressed flat, then finally laid to rest in its large, graffittied grave behind the store.     This small ritual would be a great source of comfort to me through the cold winter months. Performed each morning, it became a sort of entreé acté to the dance. With an undertaker's good spirits I would crush each box flat and toss the bodies, one by one, into the mass grave. Perhaps a dry laugh would escape my lips - for another day, at least, they were the ones ones hauled off to be recycled, not me. Their death only confirms my own existence. On a cold, foggy morning, this thought comforted me more than a mother's embrace.     On one particularly chilly morning, filled with cardboard schadenfreude, I heard a loud crash from the building next to ours. A graverobber! From the dumpster of the hair salon next door a rough-cut, brutish sort was rummaging quickly through the debris. He turned to me and said, in a voice as coarse as gravel, "Postage stamps!"     In what can only have been shock I agreed with him. "Yes!" I said, perhaps a bit too enthusiastically. "Postage stamps!"     Seeing that I hadn't fully comprehended his take on the matter, he continued. "Postage stamps! I'm lookin' for 'em." He punctuated this statement by slamming the yard debris lid closed.     I must admit I didn't know how quite to respond. Was this clearly homeless man defending himself to me? Was he still in that awkward stage of homelessness, where one is still ashamed of his position in the world? Did he claim sleeping in doorways helped his back? Did his cardboard sign read, "Need coins for coin collection."?     Or was he giving me an insider's tip? Maybe this really was his living. Perhaps it was even a lucrative venture. Heck, the more I thought of it, the more I realized I had no idea how many postage stamps were lost daily to the landfills. Of course! Nobody else was looking for them, save my new friend - there really must be money to be made here!     I rushed back into the store as giddy as a goldminer. The only explanation I could give for my sudden resignation was, "Postage stamps! I'm lookin' for 'em!" END Back