My friend Bear calls it the “wristband theory.â€Â

Imagine a couple of college girls at the Fresno Fair, fresh out of cash, longing to go on just one more ride.

Now imagine them peeking inside trash cans for a single discarded free-ride wristband, one they never did find.

Soon after that, Bear and I took our dumpster-diving to the mall, only this time, bottles and cans were our gold.

I know, it probably sounds pretty pathetic, but desperate times call for desperate measures, as Bear would say.

I was living paycheck to paycheck when the economy took a nosedive last fall, and I came to realize that when a person is low on funds, funds are all they think about.

If someone had told me about four years ago that I̢۪d be digging through waste cans looking for things to recycle, I would have laughed in his face. Shopping was my addiction of choice, and my preferred drug was all things name brand.

But a paycut and a few bounced checks were all it took to have me scrambling for change.

At first it was humiliating, yes; but after a couple of rounds of trash patrol, our mortification fell away and we began to enjoy the reactions we were getting, especially from snobby kiosk personnel.

I could write a whole book on our adventures.

Once we found a See̢۪s gift card with $2.50 still on it, so we got a couple of candy bars. Another time we found a plastic container of cookies abandoned in the J.C. Penney shoe department, and I scarfed them right up.

We put the dumpster-diving to rest as winter closed in. Now that I have two jobs and my parents have relaxed my rent, I no longer feel the need to nose through the garbage for gas money.

In fact, the only thing I couldn’t shake was the tightwad mentality. It kills me when I think of all the hundreds I wasted on clothes I no longer want or wear — all that money gone.

Prices that once seemed reasonable now appear outrageous. Gas goes down, food goes up and buying a $10 book at Borders is a luxury.

This is why I̢۪m now a clearance-digger. Sniffing out bargains is my specialty. Whenever there̢۪s a Pink special at Victoria̢۪s Secret, I buy the Pink lollipop for the free pair of panties, not the $40 bra.

Sometimes, though, I still get the urge to peer down a trash can for a still-coveted bottle or can while cruising the mall with Bear.

Ironically, I̢۪ve never had that much fun in my life nor laughed so hard. Society looks down on dumpster-diving as the realm of the homeless, but this is the same society that got us into this recession in the first place.

I don̢۪t think most people realize how much they can actually make from recycling, not to mention helping the environment.

And I̢۪ll never forget the time we hit River Park, Fashion Fair and Sierra Vista all in one night. We made quite a haul.

“I may be digging through trash cans,â€Â Bear said, “but it hasn’t kept me from getting laid.â€Â