Six items New Jerseyans refuse to buy secondhand (Opinion)

It all started when I lost my Apple AirPods for like the 15th time. For the uninitiated, AirPods are those little wireless earbuds that you stick into your ears and walk around with all day so casual passersby think that you’re talking to yourself while you’re on the phone. I love those space age looking little buggers because as a person with an executive functioning disorder, I can NEVER find my actual phone. With the AirPods in, I can just tapped them lightly to answer a call with the AirPods virtually glued into my ear canals, they are just always THERE. I kept replacing them when I lose them. Sometimes I lose just one which is a little cheaper, but at $120 something a pair this gets to be downright pricey.

I finally decided it was time to break down and buy a used pair. You can find zillions of them on eBay, but you have to be willing to overlook the fact that these were, in fact, stuck in somebody else’s ear canals. “Ewwwww,” my daughter groaned when she saw me hitting “buy it now” on the eBay listing, “Those were in somebody’s EARS!” not the worst human orifice, I reasoned.

After I pointed out that restaurant forks were ALSO in somebody else’s mouth and that surgical scalpels also cut through somebody else’s flesh, I convinced her that it was just a matter of sanitizing them. But when we talked about it on the air Monday, we came to the conclusion that there are some things New Jersey simply will not buy “used.”

Here’s the list:

Now for the acceptable second-hand purchases:

Cars, electronics, watches, jewelry and books are all considered ok to buy used.

Some helpful guidelines:

• Anything with a non-porous surface that can be cleaned and sterilized (or with a removable fabric that can be washed in the washing machine preferably at screaming high temperatures) is OK.
• Anything that has ever entered a human orifice? Not OK

The post above reflects the thoughts and observations of New Jersey 101.5 talk show host Judi Franco. Any opinions expressed are Judi's own.

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