Feeling Used

What are your thoughts on garage sales, Craigslist, etc? I don’t really wanna know, it’s just a lead-in for my posting. 

Personally, I don’t mind gently used items… including men *snicker*, *snort*

I have no problem with taking someone’s throw outs, it keeps more stuff out of landfills and if it’s in good condition, why not? During this lockdown tons of people have taken to cleaning out their houses and posting items for sale online or putting it curbside and there’s a treasure trove of stuff out there. 

I was thinking about how odd of a practice it is going shopping online for used stuff on sites like Craigslist and then going to this stranger’s house to buy what they don’t want anymore. One guy mentioned to me that I should never go alone to a stranger’s house because, in his words “There are a lot of psychos out there”, and I hadn’t really thought of it until he brought it up. You know, like the Craigslist Killer.

It’s not like I was worried though. I mean, who wants to attack an older, chubby lady? Yeah… I’m still hot though so maybe I should be more careful after all. The thing is, I live in the boring suburbs where I do most of my online shopping and to my knowledge there’s nobody like that here, and if there is a psycho killer living here, gimme his goddamn address, I wanna see what he looks like! 

He’d have to be pretty benign because look where he comes from. He’s been subjected to the mundane. If you’re a psycho, you’d probably come from the city where people piss you off every second of the day. The stench of urine alone could cause a mental break. Stuff like that gives birth to a psycho, not shopping at the mall.

A suburban psycho killer probably looks like the guy next door: He wears a flannel shirt tucked inside dad jeans with a pair of awful sneakers. I mean c’mon, that doesn’t exactly scream psycho killer, does it? He’s gotta look like someone who’s a psycho killer. Someone like… someone like…

The Unabomber! Now that’s a psycho killer.

What’s that you ask? Didn’t the Unabomber wear a flannel shirt tucked inside dad jeans? 

I uhh… ahem,  well I’m not sure. He may have had a beard or something, which definitely says psycho killer and… what’s that? The Unabomber lived in the woods and wore a flannel shirt and had a beard? Well how the hell was I supposed to know that? 

Anyway, I’m more worried about a dog than a psycho killer. 

Just the other day I was looking for a P.A. system (so I could go to malls and shopping centers and start screaming at people in a loud manner) and anyway, I found one on Craigslist and it was exactly what I was looking for. Well the person selling it happened to be a woman, so I wasn’t worried at all when I went over there, and when she answered the door, I noticed right away she was wearing a flannel shirt tucked into jean shorts.

Still wasn’t worried.

She asked me to remove my shoes before coming inside which isn’t a big deal because I do the exact same thing. Then her huge dog ambled over to say hello and I noticed his tail wasn’t wagging. That’s not really a good sign, is it? I mean, if a dog’s happy to see you, his tail would wag, right? I didn’t act scared or anything, I just started telling the dog he was really cute and patted him on the head and everything seemed fine. 

His owner took this cue to start agreeing with me about how cute her dog was because that’s what pet owners do, they talk about their pets like they’re the greatest if you say one nice thing about them. 

It’s annoying. 

Anyway, she brought out the P.A. and I sat down on the carpet and started looking it over. The dog naturally wants to come over to me now because I’m at his level and he wants to see what’s going on. So I started petting him on his head again but then he bared his teeth slightly… and his face was inches from mine… and his tail still wasn’t wagging. 

Okay, at this point, you’re probably thinking it would be a good idea to ask the owner to remove the dog. I didn’t really think of that… silly me. Instead, I asked the owner if this was Cujo’s way of smiling and being happy, and she said: “No, he’s kind of letting you know it’s time to stop petting his head. He doesn’t really like it.”

I know what you’re going to say because I was thinking the exact same thing: Why didn’t this woman tell me that her dog doesn’t really like being petted on the head by strangers instead of saying how great he was? 

So I stopped petting the dog. Then… well you’re probably wondering if I got bitten. 

No, I didn’t. Not by the dog anyway, but I can’t be too sure if I didn’t get bitten by something else because this woman’s carpet was filthy and I was sitting on it! I didn’t notice how filthy it was until I stood up. It was disgusting, and I sat on it. And I started wondering why the hell this woman asks people to remove their shoes before entering her home when she doesn’t bother to ever clean her carpet?!

The real threat about buying used items from a stranger online is not whether they’re a psycho killer, it’s whether their carpet is filthy and disgusting and their dog may or may not bite your face off. But the real lesson here I need you to understand is that I got the exact item I needed at a really great price from a woman wearing a flannel shirt tucked into jean shorts and I lived to tell you about it.

That style is so out of fashion. I hope she rethinks it.