Yesterday was the Eagle Canyon Community Yard Sale, an annual event in which fifty or more families gather their possessions, arrange them attractively on their lawns, and invite the neighbors to pay good money for things they had previously been unable to give away. It is a remarkable American institution.

Nothing demonstrates our prosperity quite so convincingly as a man selling a toaster for three dollars because he bought another toaster last year and has since discovered that the first toaster was perfectly satisfactory.

This morning I took Buddy out for his constitutional, which is a dignified expression for allowing a dog to wander about while his human follows behind carrying a bag and wondering what happened to the American dream. We wandered down the street, and I stopped at one of the houses where several boxes of unsold merchandise had been left on the lawn.

The sale was over, but apparently the merchandise had not yet received the news. So, I began looking through one of the boxes when Qwen came cruising down Nightingale on her bicycle.

Qwen is seventy-seven years young, which is the sort of age one may claim when one still rides a bicycle while the rest of us are trying to remember where we left our reading glasses. I looked up, waved, and received a cheerful wave in return.

Then she informed me that Buddy was peeing on a box of stuff. I looked down and discovered that Buddy, who has spent his entire life demonstrating a highly selective interest in household property, had chosen to baptize a box containing dog toys.

It struck me as an unfortunate coincidence. The dog had been invited to relieve himself, after all, and the box had been left unattended in a public place. Nevertheless, I felt obliged to apologize to the merchandise.

Qwen laughed, and I told her, “That wouldn’t have happened if good-looking women didn’t distract me like that!”

She laughed harder, which encouraged me to believe that my remark had been accepted as humor rather than evidence of senility. Buddy, meanwhile, regarded the entire affair with the expression of a dog who had been asked to participate in a community theater production and deeply regretted accepting the role.

I examined the box more closely. The toys appeared to have survived their baptism, although Buddy showed absolutely no interest in them. I asked how much the box cost.

“Five dollars,” came the answer.

So I paid five dollars for a box of dog toys that Buddy has already demonstrated, with considerable conviction, that he did not want.

There is a certain justice in this. The dog created the problem, the woman provided the distraction, and I paid the bill. It is essentially how civilization works. We call it economics when there are accountants involved.

The toys now sit in our house, untouched and ignored. Buddy walks past them without so much as a glance.

I suspect that if I offered him five dollars to play with them, he would look at me as though I had lost my mind. And perhaps he would be right; after all, I bought the things because he peed on them.

There are worse ways to spend five dollars, I suppose, but I cannot presently remember what they are.