Add Sheet Issues...

Solicitation
I admit it, I have a bit of a guilt complex. This means that when I see the Add Sheet people (people who stand around campus and give out these sort of mini-newspapers full of coupons), I feel like I need to take the Add Sheets from them. I mean, these folks are standing out in the cold/hot/rainy/snowy weather for as long as it takes to give out all of their Add Sheets. I mean, I'm lucky if I even go outside to go to class in that weather, and these guys are out there ALL DAY. I can't help supporting them. And since I can't really turn away from them, I often end up with more Add Sheets than I can really use. For example, a few weeks ago I ended up with four, yes FOUR Add Sheets in one day. I have only used an A.S. coupon once in my college career. So what becomes of those Add Sheets? Well...

How to use your Add Sheets
People may say that I'm killing trees by associating with the whole Add Sheet thing, but I figure that they're being printed whether I take one or not, so I may as well take one. So, I often end up with lots of Add Sheets. I have, therefore, thought of many ways of putting these to good use:
1) Wrapping paper. You know how when you were broke in high school you used the comics to wrap Christmas presents? This is sort of like that. You just wrap the present in A.S. pages, and you've got free wrapping paper.
2) "It makes me want to throw things!" This is a phrase I use all the time, but I never seem to have any ammo to throw. Solution? Ball up A.S. pages and fling them at people when they annoy me. I should start keeping some under my desk and another stack in my book bag, just to throw at people and things that annoy me. Look out, Bear.
3) Hats and Boats. Remember in elementary school when you learned to fold newspaper into cool things? A.S. can be used for the same thing. Just tape a few A.S. together and you can do the oragamy thing to make a hat. Then you can wear the hat all over campus, cover up your bad hair days, and generally make people think you're nuts. (And let's face it, if you're my friend, you probably fall into the "slightly weird" category, anyway.) Or you can fold the A.S. into little boats, which you can float in all the fountains on campus. That'd be a fun game until the campus police came along to drag you off to...wherever the campus police put people who misbehave.
4) Wall paper. News flash for anyone not in college: residence hall paint is NOT PRETTY. Really, concrete blocks painted in dreadfully pale pastel shades aren't exactly aesthetically pleasing. Now you can use your A.S. to wallpaper your room. You can get your walls to be a pleasant shade of yellow with interesting designs (also known as letters) covering them. It could be the next big thing in room design.
5) Coffee filters. So, coffee is gross. But if you insist on drinking this expensive mud-like concoction, you might as well drop a little bit of the expense. You could use A.S. in your coffee maker as filters to make really weak coffee. Yeck.
6) Shoe dryers. Next time you step in a puddle (as I did last night... just call me grace) you can take off your shoes when you get home and shove some A.S. into them. The A.S. will absorb the water, leaving you with nice, happy, dry insoles.
7) Mood lighting. So, in addition to rather lousy paint jobs, dorm rooms also feature poor lighting. Neither that "special somoeone" nor your roommate's pet rat looks good with the fluorescent overhead lighting of a dorm room. Instead, now you can cover your light fixture with A.S., which will dim and soften this light, making you look jaundiced rather than deathly pale. Definitely an improvement.
8) Food Storage. As a college student, I practically live on pizza. The problem with this is that I can't eat a whole pizza in one sitting and I only have a mini-fridge for the pizza, which is clearly not big enough for a pizza box. Solution: wrap the pieces of pizza in A.S. using tape to make it secure. Voila, instant tupperware (though perhaps not so air-tight, but how long is that pizza really going to be in the fridge, anyway?).
9) That's cheap! And, of course, you could be all boring and traditional and actually use A.S. for the coupons and deal announcements, but that's not really any fun.
*If you have any suggestions for further uses for Add Sheets, fell free to comment at the bottom of the page, I'm always searching for more!*

The Dudes
I have two favorite Add-Sheet-hander-outers. One is the guy on the corner of Rollins and Hitt. He really sells the A.S., calling out funny one-liners and talking about the deals in this week's A.S. He cracks me up, so I can't help but take an A.S. from him. I swear, if he could get the gig, this guy could do stand-up. My other favorite is one of the guys who is usually on Speakers Circle on the A&S side. I like him particularly because I think he's really Dustin Hoffman hiding out and researching how people express emotion to work on his craft. I mean, the dude looks exactly like Dustin Hoffman, with perhaps a little more weight in the face. He's quiet, never making himself stand out, just handing the A.S. to passersby, looking thoughtful and a little sad. Every time I walk past I take an A.S., smile, and say thank you, just to encourage him. I mean, it takes a lot for anyone to go and hawk coupon books on a college campus in all weather, particularly a famous actor.

(Can you tell I'm working a peculiarly boring desk shift this morning and trying to stay awake?)