Trying to unload that unused surfboard? Why not try out Craigslist?
You’re sure to get an offer that’ll make you mutter ‘Good Lord’…
“Moving halfway across the Pacific Ocean is pretty expensive–especially when neither of us have jobs waiting for us…”
True, My Beautiful Bride’s logic was airtight–nevertheless I resisted.1#ElizabethWarrenHumor
“Yeah…but, I have so many memories with that board,” I said with the tiniest tear forming in my eye.
Sure, I was sad that we had to leave Hawai’i after living there for a way-too-short two years, but why was I inexplicably waxing sentimental about a surfboard?!? Especially this surfboard?
“Seriously? Did you even catch a single wave on that board?” was her cold response.
“No, I suppose not. But the one time I did take it was when I paddled up the shore so far I ended up in the private surf spot of the short dude from Hawaii 5-0. Um…you know, real big celebrity…what’s his name again? Oh! Scott Caan, son of legendary actor, James Caan. Yeah, it was just me and him and our trusty boards…”
“Didn’t you say that you were pretty sure you were giving him stalker vibes?”
“That’s true. Okay, so maybe it was just a memory with the ol’ NSP, and perhaps not the greatest one,” I conceded.
“And wasn’t the only other experience you had with that board was when you bought it off Craigslist, and you totally got duped into thinking it was much longer?”
“Oh, right. That. Well, at least I learned the very valuable lesson that I probably shouldn’t be blindly trusted with scientific endeavors…or anything else that requires accurate measurements.”
“Sooooo…”
After a brief awkward pause between me and my wife, I had to confess my confusion.
“So, what?”
“So basically this 7’10” board is emotional dead-weight, then?”
Oh, I wasn’t about to give up and let go of such a hard-earned possession just yet.
“No, no, no. I didn’t say that. You don’t understand: this board is so much more than just a useless piece of recreational equipment; nay, this board is an allegory. It’s a physical manifestation of my eternal optimism. I may be a big fella today, but one day…”
My words trailed off as I dramatically gazed off into the distance, lost in the view of the Pacific Ocean from our window.
“*Ahem*–one day I will be light and lithe enough to not need my 11-foot board to catch waves and I’ll be hanging ten on that little guy instead,” I finished my thought, as I continued to gaze out over the endless blue expanse…
“Hey…Hey. Hey! Snap out of it! We could use the extra cash to help cover our move back to the Mainland. Now I need you to put the ----- thing on Craigslist and try to get back as much of the $350 your dumbass spent on it in the first place.”
*Sigh*. “Okay, but first: just one last ride…”
“Dear, we don’t have the luxury of waiting around for you to figure out how to catch a wave on that thing.”
“Well, dangit, I’ve had this for almost 2 years, and I’m not letting it go to complete waste. One of us is going to ride this before it’s going on Craigslist!”
At that point, the conversation seemed to kind of fizzle out, so I headed out the door for work, not giving it much more thought for the rest of the day.
However, when I got home that evening, what’s the first thing I see when I logged on to FaceBook?
I see My Beautiful Bride’s post of the only one of us that is actually the right size for that board:
Well, that’s what I get for not being more specific. Welp, Craigslist, here I come…
“For Sale: One NSP surfboard. Size: definitely not 10 and half foot. Asking price: $450.”
I turned to My Beautiful Bride who had been listening to me compose the Craigslist ad aloud. “Sound good to you?”
“You’re seriously going to ask $450 for it?”
“Hey, baby proverbially needs new shoes, right? You gotta start high cuz you know the Peoples of Craigslist alway, always be low-ballin’ and trying to talk you way down. It’s just the way of this world.”
“Whatever you say.”
“Dang skippy ‘whatever I say.’ Now, let’s see what type of sweet deal I can rustle up…”
It didn’t take long for the texts to come in:
(A brief interrupting note from the Author: Before I continue, I just want to point out a couple of things. First, I’ve been holding onto this text thread for almost 10 years now, and is in fact the second oldest text thread surviving in my iMessages. There’s just something about it that keeps me from, deleting it like I should. Second, I’ve kept them for historically accuracy, but I just noticed that iMessages screwed me over by displaying the time/date for my current time zone, EDT. This particular message chain started at 5:24 pm, Hawaiian Standard Time. In case you were wondering…)
Okay, just a normal Craigslist interaction so far. Gotta let the prospective buyer see the goods–and what better place than a poorly lit parking lot near a gas station after dark? The conversation continued:
Just some basic exchanging of identifying info, in order to avoid either of us having to awkwardly ask everybody minding their own business, filling up their vehicles, “You the dude from Craigslist? With the surfboard?”
Well, I roll up in my Pathfinder at the prescribed time to find a truly local dude awaiting me. At first I thought he was cool, but then dude started negging my board. If you don’t know what ‘negging’ is, it’s a tactic sleazy, skeezy, below-average looking guys use to try to pick up chicas way out of their league, and involves making side-handed and back-handed ‘compliments’ that are actually insults and are meant to lower the woman’s self-esteem enough to want to sleep with a choad 5 rings below her on the social ladder.
And homeboy here, was trying that on my surfboard. Of course he was trying to make me think that my board wasn’t worth anything so he could buy it for practically nothing–but I was having none of his nonsense.
“Haha, you’re so funny, Tyler! Only offering $175 for my $450 board, now that’s a real joke. Nah, man, look: I got made a fool when I bought this thing, but I sure the heck ain’t gonna be made a fool selling it. So take you’re little piece of poo Mazda truck and go back from whence you came.”
Disappointed he wasn’t able to take the board off my hands for next to nada, my dude got back in his tiny pickup and whizzed off into the night, never to been seen or heard from again…
“Tyler??? Why the heck is that rando from Craigslist texting me? Unless, perhaps, he has come to his senses and will offer $350 for my board? Yes. Sure that must be it…”
*Checks text*2Again, the time stamp is incorrect. The text was actually sent at 8:19 pm local time…meaning he must have sent it within 5-10 minutes after he left me, lol.
Welp. That definitely was not an offer for $350. But…was it perhaps even more valuable? Not that I’m the type of guy that: A) Goes clubbing; nor B) Has friends that go clubbing; nor C) Has friend; nor D) Had 3 different nights free to go clubbing, what with a new baby and preparing to move 5000 miles in 3 weeks, but…
“Intriguing offer, My Dude…but I’ll have to check out this ‘Club 939’ you speak of tomorrow at work…”
*The next day at work:*
“Hey Boss-man Andy, you ever heard of Club 939? I’m trying to sell the ‘board that enters the wave at 10-1/2 feet’, and some dude is trying to ply me with a VIP booth at this place.” My boss was born and raised in Honolulu, so surely he would know all the hottest spots in town, right?
“Nah, I don’t think I’ve heard of that bar. Let’s scope it out online…maybe we could get together there with the fellas in the lab on one of your last nights here in Hawaii. Gotta give you a proper send-off, after all.”
“Good thinking. Now let me just Google it…”
*Moments later, on my computer screen. At work. With my boss eagerly looking over my shoulder. This:*
…
…
…
…
“Ohhhhhhh, riiiiiiight. That kind of club,” I realized aloud.
“Dude, you definitely got to take him up on that offer!”
“Andy, I know you’re a cool boss, and all–I mean, I must be the only guy in the world to get in trouble for going into work too early when the surf was up–but I think I’m going to hold off and sell it for $300 to a middle-aged father looking for the perfect-sized board to teach his 9 and 12 year old daughters to surf on.”
“Well, you’re no fun…and that’s a very specific demographic you’re expecting to respond to your Craigslist ad…”3That’s called using retrospective foreshadowing to sneak in a boring story resolution without needlessly boring, you, Dear Reader.
The point of the story is there are no real gentlemen at a Gentlemen’s Club. I mean–true story– I was a squeaky-clean family man long before I had a wife and kid, and even more so once they came along. And a true gentlemen like myself ain’t gonna pull no Perverted Jack and the Beanstalk move at a time when they need me most.
You know: just like Jack’s mom trusted him to sell their last cow so they could eat and that bunghole came back with a handful of beans, I ain’t gonna be that guy whose wife trusted him to go out and sell his surfboard so he could feed my family, but instead finally comes back at 2 am saying, “Hear me out…I didn’t get much cash. I got something WAAAAY better…”
…
…
Anyways…I suppose I’ll leave you with one of the many tid-bits I uncovered while researching this story (tid-bits that include, but are not limited to: reading Google reviews for a strip club for the first time in my life; noting that the most recent calendar they offer for sale in their online store is from 2013–though they are clearly still in business; and discovering what, exactly, is on the application form for employment at such an establishment–one of the few places where ‘Ass Manager’ isn’t just an unfortunate abbreviation):
Ladies and [true] gentlemen, may I present to you what I like to call, ‘Jacklynn’s Beanstalk’:
It’s…uh…it’s “the tallest pole in all of Hawaii”. In case you were wondering…
Content created on: 18/20/21 May 2023 (Thurs/Sat/Sun)
Footnotes & References:
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