I bought a scooter once.
When one motorcyclist sees another he does this kind of underhanded wave with a nod. There is an unspoken set of rules and one of these rules is if you are riding a 150 cc scooter you may return a wave to one of the big mustache bearing pig riders who condescends to acknowledge you. On the other hand, to initiate the exchange while riding something that sounds like a blender and feels like maybe your phone is vibrating instead of sounding like a boat and rumbling enough so that a lesser man would be rendered infertile by daring to straddle the beast is awfully impertinent.
So I put the scooter up for sale on KSL. Someone whose life ambition is to emulate John Wayne should have more sense (Although the picture posted below made me feel a bit better).
The scooter proved to be a tough sale. Tough enough that I began to lose hope until one day a woman called. She showed up with two hundred dollars less than I was asking for the bike, but as I said, I was desperate. Her teeth were brown and her breath reeked of ramen noodles. One eye looked at my shoes and the other strayed between my hairline and my left shoulder. She may have been tweeking. I’m not sure on that score.
“Now I can drive this on the sidewalk right?” she asked me.
I told her she needed a license, which she didn’t have.
In the end I sold her the scooter and she probably died on the way home. But my wallet was fat. I like to think I helped nature weed out the sickly gazelle that day. If that makes me a capitalist pig then I am Nature’s capitalist pig.
I had a fish tank once.
Let me just say that I actually like fish, and enjoyed them while I had them, but then I had a baby and the fish had to go. There just wasn’t enough room. Back to KSL. I put the fish and tank up for far less than I had put into it all and I had a buyer within the hour.
When he came I offered to flush the fish to make transporting the tank easier the guy looked at me like I had slaughtered a baby seal right there in the parkinglot. So we bagged the fish and off he went. Would I have killed all those fish for thirty dollars? Apparently so. It’s the circle of life. Those fish had devoured the guppies I bought at first. Once again, Nature’s Pig.
I rescued a dog once.
I recognized the danger of buying the dog that pissed itself when I reached to pet it, but my best friend had fallen in love so home it came. It was a dog rescued from California. Did I drill the saleslady about the idiocy of spending Utah tax dollars to save California’s pest problem? Yes. Did I lie on the humane society’s aptitude questionnaire? I guess that depends on perspective. I passed and I’m no humanitarian so I’d have to say yes.
I yelled at the dog once and it hid under the bed all day. It must have been beaten. I peed all over the place. Hello KSL.
My uncle found a dog once.
He is a capitalist with a nice streak I guess because he drove it down to the Humane Society. The lady told him that would be twenty bucks for the drop off. He said, “Like hell.” And tied it up outside.
In my defense I did not ever sell a dead bird to a blind kid. The tweeker bought the bike of her own volition and I asked the tank buyer before flushing the fish. The dog—well hopefully he found a patient owner who did not mind the smell of piss.
A note to my one and only follower who I believe to be Tegan (a real humanitarian whom I admire): Most of the above is sarcasm. The fish? Yeah a bit heartless. The dog? It needed someone with more patience and time. I have had animals I’ve loved and kept.
