Friday, August 26, 2011

On "monte cristo-ing"

Whenever my twin sister Kenzie is trying to get somewhere and gets a little lost, she always goes opposite of her instinct. When she thinks to turn right, she goes left, and vice versa. As someone who is "directionally challenged" (seriously, I am continuously shocked at how lost she gets) Kenz finds that she makes it to where she needs to go by not following her shoddy inner compass. I have a shoddy inner compass as well, but it refers to my communication instincts. So I follow her rule and try not to talk when I feel like talking. This rule applies especially when annoyed, and extra especially when I feel like saying "well, actually...". Those who know me also know that I fail often in this, but I try. When I remember.

This week we found a great deal for a baby bike seat on Craigslist, (aka the Walmart of the aught generation) and went to pick it up on Wednesday. We had never received an exact address or phone number, just an cross street downtown--but it was in the Pearl district so I wasn't too worried. In summary, we showed up at the designated time (actually earlier, I emailed her we were there) and waited. And waited and waited. It was after Theo's bedtime, and he was trying to throw himself in a park pond, so we finally left. Theo was overtired and screaming. Suddenly Jon, the stalwart of the anti-impulse, the calm peacemaker of the family, decided that we should record a short video clip of our horrifically screaming child, and email it to the seller. I agreed without hesitation. We assumed she had found another buyer and had left us out to dry. Bike seat deal over. We decided to send her a message, politely worded, with a surprise at the end. Hopefully it would induce enough guilt to make her reconsider her bad Craigslist etiquette. High fives to awesome technology! We crowned ourselves geniuses.





1), 2) Maiden voyage! Helmet with skulls! Helmets sans skulls or other doodlies are for rich people, apparently, so we have skulls. 3) Maiden voyage ends, and the sadness begins. Looks like we have a winner!


What are these bike seat pictures, you ask? I guess I left out the part where the next morning we get an email from the seller who didn't get any of our emails until that morning (internet was out), therefore missing us while she was at home ready to meet us. And then after some searching we realized that this deal was still too good to pass up, and didn't exist elsewhere. We fought over who was going to make the initial call back, and I lost. After hearing a cute tiny girl voice on the voicemail message, the regret started to creep in. Then I sent Jon to pick it up after I talked to her (her: I'm so sorry that... me: No problem! It's great! I'm trying not to sound embarrassed!") so we could both partake in the awkwardness. There is that chance she never opened the video, but like an errant text message to the wrong receiver, you must always assume the message has made it.

Shoddy inner compass: 1
Me: 0

If only I had a J. Walter Weatherman handy to teach me life's lessons!

3 comments:

vanessa said...

i'm impressed with the video sending. genius. i think you should also send this to the guy who bought your car. he deserves to be screamed at.

theo is adorable on the bike!

Ty and Meg said...

HA! I love this story. Very awesome. Glad you got your bike seat.

kenzie said...

come on, I'm not that bad, just when I'm walking the NYC streets... or driving, ok I guess I'm bad. I have to do the same with my talking too, and I also fail lots of times. Theo looks so cute in his bike seat and his large helmet for his peanut head.