It is high time I post a blog again for the simple reason that I need to get the fact that I am "losing it" off the top -- I think I've done another 5 brain dead things this week, but I'm not going to admit to them right now. Very early on, as I started this blog, I admitted that I created it for the simple reason of being honest and hoping that I would find someone along the way who can relate, and tell me I'm doing O.K. In reality, I'm finding people who say things like -- "I sure thought your "losing it" list was funny." To which I eagerly reply, "Because you can relate?" And they say, "No! I've never done any of those things?" Ayyyee!
Today, however, rather than admit to being a scatter brain. I'll admit to being a sucker. I am simply a sucker for people who come to my door selling things. Sometimes it has worked out, other times...not so well. I haven't always been this way -- I used to pride myself on being a tough cookie. "Who do these people think they are, wasting my time..." But I have softened some over the years and it's probably for the best. "Who do I think I am that these nice people don't deserve a chance to make a living?" In the last year I have made the following purchases from someone ringing my doorbell:
1. I bought Avon from the most "glowing from the inside" person I have ever met. I would see this dear lady walking miles from my house -- always smiling and wondered what she was doing. Then one day she came to my door selling Avon. She was trying to establish herself, didn't have a car, and needed cash upfront for the sale before I received the product. That should be a big red flag, but I decided to take the risk. If this person needed the cash that bad and didn't return with my product, well I guess she really needed the money. So I spent $20, hoping she would return with my product. Not because I was desperate for lotion and bubble bath. But because I wanted her to be the good person I took her for. As she left she said "Can I give you a hug? I hug all my customers. God bless you!" She did return with my products -- walked all the way to my house to deliver them. God bless her!
2. I bought meat from a guy selling shrinked wrapped frozen beef in many varieties and cuts. I must say I am quite the negotiator. I talked him down to below half his starting price and got a freezer full of mediocre meat.
3. I bought some bio-degradable household cleaner from a some salesman. He had me sold on the product the minute he demonstrated how it could take Sharpie out of a piece of cloth. (We've had more than our fair share of Sharpie accidents.) He also began cleaning the mildew from my camper, but stopped after one brilliantly clean streak. Again, I negotiated down from $40 a bottle, to $40 for two bottles, to $20 for one bottle. Sold! It is the kind of cleaner you dilute so I should be good for the next 10 years. If you have a stain -- let me know!
4. I bought a magazine from a very polite young man who was trying to better his life. He was an orphan from Florida who was up in South Dakota on a 35 degree rainy day with some youth program trying to make something of himself. He could earn points if I just bought a magazine and signed his sheet telling his supervisor how he did. He let me know that if I didn't need a magazine for myself, I could buy one for the kids in his orphanage...perhaps they would be interested in
Forbes, he suggested. (Yes, by this point there were red flags EVERYWHERE. First, orphanages no longer exist in the United States and second what child is going to want to read
Forbes Magazine ?!?!?(the most expensive one, by the way)). Well despite those red flags, I decided to chance it again, as I did with the Avon lady. You just have to go out on a limb sometime and give people the benefit of the doubt. I bought the Disney Magazine for $25. The next day it was reported all over the local news about these magazine sales people who were a sham. I was disappointed, not because I wasn't going to be receiving the Disney Magazine, but because he let me down!
5. Today I spent
2 and a half hours on my one day off to listen to a Kirby salesman ONLY because there was the promise of a free carpet cleaning attached to it. Somewhere along the line someone stopped at my front door and asked me to fill out a sweepstakes for free groceries which I, of course, did. Somehow that turned into me
winning a "free carpet cleaning". (Yeah right!) When they called to schedule the appointment I asked how long it would take, explaining that I only had one hour and wasn't going to buy a vaccuum. He said "It will only take an hour and there is no sales pitch." I believed him...What a mistake! Eddie arrived today, and after a two hour demonstration which included being shown over and over exactly how nasty my carpets were, he breezed over my carpets with his shampooer and then I essentially kicked dear Eddie out the door. He was nice and all, but my children were already waiting for me to pick them up from school. I am happy to report that I didn't buy a vaccuum and my carpets are clean, but boy, did it cost me my time.
So here I sit...my skin is soft, I just ate a decent burger, my spots are removed, and my carpets are clean. I'm not a total sucker....If only I could read a magazine!
