Are you lonely?
Are you one of the millions who will spend your favorite spiritual and/or commercial holiday watching “paid programming,” or, even worse, visiting parents or relatives?
When you see wholesome family Christmas scenes, like a white suburban family with 2.5 children hanging red stockings by their electric fireplace, does it make you wish their wholesome family golden retriever would leave an accident under their picturesque Norman Rockwell Christmas tree?
If so, I have some encouraging words for you.
A family of your own may be on the way sooner than you think.
Look, even I’ve got one, for crying out loud.
I used to be one of you, a sociopathic misogynist with anti-social tendencies.
I was 23. It was a simpler time, when “Survivor” was the only reality program on TV, and “high speed Internet” meant not getting a busy signal the first ten times you dialed in to AOL.
Soured by a string of hard luck with the ladies dating back to 4th grade, I was primed for a life of irresponsible bachelorhood.
As it turns out, this was the perfect time to meet my future wife.
My parents run a dance studio, and this random woman needed a partner. I sometimes served as their dance gigolo.
Had I known what was at stake, I probably would have handled the situation differently.
I might not have shown up wearing a ratty, torn T-shirt and cut-off jeans, both smeared with tar and various other stains.
Having come straight from a couple of hours broiling on my grandmother’s roof, where I had been sealing a leak, I probably should have stopped to take a shower.
But how can I regret anything, considering how it all turned out?
Who knew that the perfect strategy was to try to sabotage any chance of attracting a woman, or even a moderately selective rodent?
It all proves that first impressions mean zilch. As we got to know each other, she realized my personality was not quite as horrendous as my wardrobe, hygiene habits, and general social awareness.
Several weeks later, we met up at a dance, and ended up sharing a meal afterward at Pat’s Pizza in Orono.
Eventually, the topic turned to relationships, which gave me the opportunity to inform my future wife that I had sworn off women.
“That’s too bad,” she said, “because I was starting to get pretty interested in you.”
This could have been considered coming on a bit strong. It certainly caught me off guard.
I’m not sure what I said, but I think it was something along the lines of, “oh.”
It had been a lot easier to embrace bachelorhood when I was convinced no honest, self-respecting women available would be caught dead in the same zip code as me anyway.
The conversation carried on, from politics, family values, and various other important topics. At midnight, she turned 30. We punched up some Elvis on the juke box and danced the jitterbug for the few stragglers left of the Friday night Pat’s crowd.
That just about sealed my fate.
So my advice to the lonely this holiday season is to get out and participate in something – volunteer at a soup kitchen, go take a dance class, whatever it takes.
And when you encounter a potential mate, be sure to either ignore that person or maybe, if necessary, tell him or her to go straight to hell.
Then send me your family Christmas card in a few years.
Saturday, December 13, 2008
Saturday, December 6, 2008
Revenge of the Car Buyer
“Your trade-in offer is a full $2000 less than the listed Blue Book value for a trade in,” I said. “Can you explain that?”
The salesman shrugged his shoulders and said he would go talk to the manager.
He came back five minutes later. “Tell you what we can do,” he said. “We can go ahead and leave the steering wheel in your new car. Normally, we wouldn’t do that, but I like you guys and I want to earn your business. And we’ll wipe the congealed blood off the windshield for no extra charge. That should make up the difference.”
My wife and I actually considered the merits of his offer before realizing it still left us with a payment that burst our budget like a tomato in a microwave.
Eventually, we got up to leave, saying, “I guess it’s just not going to work out.”
Maybe it was because it was the end of the month. Maybe it was because Christmas is coming up and the economy is turning the retail auto business into a ride through the intestines of a sick narwhal.
Whatever it was, I’ll never be able to explain what happened next. You should have seen the crazed, desperate look in the salesman’s eye. Then some mystical force held us in place. Profound fatigue invaded, and the urge to sleep penetrated our eyeballs, fogging the world.
Next thing we knew, we were signing the final purchase papers.
“This one is the application for title, and this one says you received notice of our privacy party.”
“Okay.”
“And form just acknowledges that we told you about the Gap Insurance, the Body Integrity Insurance, the Tire Insurance, the Extended Warranty, the Way Extended Warranty, the Overenthusiastic Fishtailing Fender Bash Insurance, and the Beverage Spillage coverage.”
“Of course.”
“And this form certifies that you are a senseless boob who should not be allowed to have a checking account, let alone a car loan.”
“Yes, yes. Just let me sign it, already.”
Because they had to jack up their offer for our car to its actual trade-in value, the advertised special offer that brought us there in the first place no longer applied (in the ad industry, this is known as a “bait-and-switch”).
In the end, we got a reasonable price on our trade in and paid a reasonable price for our new car, but not an especially good deal.
What sickens me, though, is that I felt so unaware of the situation, letting the dealer control the process, rather than participating as an equal in the negotiation.
That’s my own fault, but it sure doesn’t make me feel any more sympathetic to the automobile industry as it begs for money from the government.
The big bank bailout was different. I went along with it, mainly because I don’t understand the financial industry.
All I know is the idea of banks failing seems just wrong. They exist to make money. They don’t make cars or computer chips or fancy toilet seats with playing cards embedded in them, or anything else subject to the law of supply and demand. They just make money. So if they can’t even manage that, we are all in deep doo-doo.
But cars are another matter. I know a lot about cars, and how cars are sold, so it doesn’t hurt my feelings at all to see any car company get its comeuppance.
The salesman shrugged his shoulders and said he would go talk to the manager.
He came back five minutes later. “Tell you what we can do,” he said. “We can go ahead and leave the steering wheel in your new car. Normally, we wouldn’t do that, but I like you guys and I want to earn your business. And we’ll wipe the congealed blood off the windshield for no extra charge. That should make up the difference.”
My wife and I actually considered the merits of his offer before realizing it still left us with a payment that burst our budget like a tomato in a microwave.
Eventually, we got up to leave, saying, “I guess it’s just not going to work out.”
Maybe it was because it was the end of the month. Maybe it was because Christmas is coming up and the economy is turning the retail auto business into a ride through the intestines of a sick narwhal.
Whatever it was, I’ll never be able to explain what happened next. You should have seen the crazed, desperate look in the salesman’s eye. Then some mystical force held us in place. Profound fatigue invaded, and the urge to sleep penetrated our eyeballs, fogging the world.
Next thing we knew, we were signing the final purchase papers.
“This one is the application for title, and this one says you received notice of our privacy party.”
“Okay.”
“And form just acknowledges that we told you about the Gap Insurance, the Body Integrity Insurance, the Tire Insurance, the Extended Warranty, the Way Extended Warranty, the Overenthusiastic Fishtailing Fender Bash Insurance, and the Beverage Spillage coverage.”
“Of course.”
“And this form certifies that you are a senseless boob who should not be allowed to have a checking account, let alone a car loan.”
“Yes, yes. Just let me sign it, already.”
Because they had to jack up their offer for our car to its actual trade-in value, the advertised special offer that brought us there in the first place no longer applied (in the ad industry, this is known as a “bait-and-switch”).
In the end, we got a reasonable price on our trade in and paid a reasonable price for our new car, but not an especially good deal.
What sickens me, though, is that I felt so unaware of the situation, letting the dealer control the process, rather than participating as an equal in the negotiation.
That’s my own fault, but it sure doesn’t make me feel any more sympathetic to the automobile industry as it begs for money from the government.
The big bank bailout was different. I went along with it, mainly because I don’t understand the financial industry.
All I know is the idea of banks failing seems just wrong. They exist to make money. They don’t make cars or computer chips or fancy toilet seats with playing cards embedded in them, or anything else subject to the law of supply and demand. They just make money. So if they can’t even manage that, we are all in deep doo-doo.
But cars are another matter. I know a lot about cars, and how cars are sold, so it doesn’t hurt my feelings at all to see any car company get its comeuppance.
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