My Exersaucer Cannot Be Converted To A Porch Swing And No I Won't Mail It To You

Meredith's first birthday is in 2 weeks. She's outgrown lots of her baby "equipment" like swings and exersaucers. We're done having babies so there's really no reason to hang on to this stuff so we're listing some things on Craigslist. Craigslist is great isn't it? Free listings and you get to make money and clear excess stuff out of the house and someone else gets good bargain. It's like a Garage Sale without the Garage. Everyone's happy right?

The only annoying thing about Craigslist? You talk to a lot of flakes. Like the girl that drove all the way from Butler on Thanksgiving Day to look at a baby seat with a three point harness. On the phone she asked me if she could convert it to a 5 point harness. No absolutely not. But when she arrived that was all she wanted to look at - NOT the stroller that was actually listed for sale in the Craigslist listing. I was just tossing the baby seat in for free.

We were selling a truck years ago. It was a really old truck and it was pretty shitty looking and it was one of those trucks that might go another year or two or it might fall apart and blow up the next day. But it was inspected for the year and it ran. We ran an ad in the Pennysaver, the local magazine that's the print version of Craigslist.

We were only asking $500 for it.

We got calls from some of the world's largest idiots. One woman called and asked me what color it was. Orangey-red mixed with body putty color with a side order of rust. And did I mention it was painted wtih a paintbrush? So then she wants to know what color the interior is. Uh lady? It's a $500 truck why do you care what color it is? She tells me she wants to buy it for her teenage daughter. I assured her that her teenage daughter would want nothing to do with this truck. But she persisted and wanted to know if it had a good stereo system. I couldn't inflict that truck on some poor unsuspecting 16 year old girl, so as much as I wanted to sell the beast, I politely declined her offer to look at it.

Then we had the guy that called about 12 times a day. He started off politely enough stating his name, his interest in our truck, and his phone number and would we please call him back. He left several messages throughout the day, each more agitated than the last that we hadn't already returned his call. Because we weren't out of the house during the day doing anything like WORKING. But I suspect that possibility doesn't occur to professionally unemployed people.

For the next few days he would call regularly throughout the day AND night sometimes as late as 2:00 am and scream at us on our answering machine, telling us we really needed to call him back right away because he really needed a f*$%ing truck!

Yeah, I was rushing to tell HIM where I lived.

Then there was the guy that called and asked lots of appropriate questions, was very interested and understood that this was a work vehicle in questionable shape. Oh yes, he understood and he was really interested. Great! So when do you want to look at it?

And he starts giving me directions to his house. Uh, sorry Mister, this is not Domino's. But he explains logically, I can't get there I don't have a car. That's why I need this truck.

It's called public transportation buddy. Go get a bus schedule.

Last but not least was the guy that called about 3 months after we sold it. When he called he sounded a bit "mellow." Like the kind of mellow that's achieved with a pipe and fragrant green plants. I told him he was too late and I asked him where he got our number. He said he read it in the Pennysaver and he had it right in front of him.

Dude, you might want to check the date on that Pennysaver you used to lay out your rolling papers.

We did finally sell it to a really nice guy that painted houses for a living and his pregnant girlfriend for $400. And it ran for awhile afterward too because we often saw it driving around.

Perhaps we should just look at Craigslist as a social networking forum for the underprivileged.