Last week I bought one of those giant vacuum insulated travel mugs (not a Stanley) from a discount variety store, along with a bunch of other things. After I paid, the cashier asked “do you want the receipt?”, I normally say no, but this time for some reason I said yes. After I left the store, my kids needed to use the restroom, so while they went I sat down on the bench and absently looked through the receipt in my hand. I immediately noticed I got charged twice for the mug. The cashier must’ve double scanned it. I went back to the store, showed a manager my receipt, and they refunded me the difference.

That was technically my last refund, but the last product I actually returned was a set of tws (true-wireless-stereo) IEMs (fancy earbuds). They were a brand new model just released with great reviews, I bought them from Amazon, received them, and used them about a week. During that week I noticed every time they were in my ears, my ear canals got super irritated and my ears felt warm. And whenever I removed them the insides of my ears would be crazy itchy for hours afterwards. It got to a point after a week of use that my ear canals would swell and close up about 15 minutes after I put the earbuds in my ears. Didn’t take a rocket surgeon to work out I was allergic to whatever material that earphone was made of. I still had the box and all the packaging, submitted a return to Amazon with the comment “my ears are allergic to those earphones” and they accepted it no problems, I got a full refund.

Oh man, I have all of these! Pain in the head behind the eyes when the alarm goes off, prolonged squinting with certain kinds of bright lights, I get physical pain in my head from specific outdoor sounds like a very loud motorcycle exhaust.

But most striking of all, I have the pain response to tickling. If someone tries tickling me anywhere on my body my back spasms and my diaphragm contracts, my vision goes black and I have to concentrate to stop myself from yelling and screaming. It’s not the same as regular pain like a cut or bruise or a burn, is more like someone tasering me.

I’ve always been pretty sensitive to tickling since I was a kid, but it got way worse after I got a pinched nerve in my back about 10 years ago.

I was also very mildly on the autism spectrum when I was a kid, then I was neurotypical from puberty until my early 30s, now nearly 40 I’m back deep into the spectrum.

But surely the carbon footprint of mailing the heads back to be recycled does more harm to the planet than not recycling the heads? Seems like a bit of green thumb theatre.

Like when everyone a couple years ago were collecting their plastic bread tags to send to that guy in Africa who was turning them into recycled plastic bricks to make a house. Seriously, just bin the bread tags and send him $10, you’ll save yourself $15 in international shipping costs, and he cound buy 1000 bread tags, or even better a bunch of pre-made bricks, and we don’t have to be mailing our trash all around the world.