Also, sometimes a finagled scrap of glass serves just fine.

I take a piece too big for the picture frame to Rocking R—they have this fabulous guillotine-type cutting machine—and ask them to lop off the unwanted inches. It might break wrong, the beefy man says, because it’s my glass he’s holding, not the store’s, and I say, Oh, no problem.

It never cracks freakishly or shatters.

No charge, the beefy man might even say, happy to be saving the world from sloth and consumerism. And off I go, weaving past the other customers, ginger about the clear and present danger in my hands, trying not to pierce someone in the kidneys or slice my own skin.

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