Recently,
I joined a “Buy Nothing” group on Facebook. If you are unfamiliar with the concept of these groups they are based on the idea that your
neighbors have most things you need, all you have to do is “ask”. On the
flip side, you have most things your neighbors need, so you can offer up stuff
to “gift”. To date, I’ve had to buy stuff, but it was nice to gift the linoleum
scrap and pieces of sheet rock that were sitting in my shed. It turns out the
group can provide some entertainment too. I did some gifting on Friday that
threw me for a loop, and is still giving me a laugh when I think of it.
We wanted
to get rid of our freezer in the shed that uses too much electricity, but there
were two frozen chickens in it we just couldn’t throw away. No friends came to
mind that we could give them to, so I posted on the “Buy Nothing” group a “Gift” of
the two ill fated birds. It only took about five minutes for two of my fellow
South Tacomans to comment “please consider”. I went out to the shed to get the
two cadavers, and surprisingly found two more in the bottom of the freezer, and
posted those up. They were claimed just as quickly, with a neighbor wanting two
of them. One nice person came to get one of the frozen fowls Thursday night,
and the other two people wanted to come Friday morning. Sure enough, around
9:45 pm, a friendly carnivore texted me that they were coming over to get the poor
poultry. I texted back the universal “K” to signal come on over. She assured me
they were just right around the corner, so I went to the freezer and put two of
the frozen lumps of bone and flesh in a reusable shopping bag and placed them
by the front door. I grabbed two because I wasn’t sure if this person wanted
one or two of the remaining corpses.
About ten
minutes later the door bell rang and I went to the door and opened it.
“Hi, are you Nancy here for the chicken”, I said,
like it would be anyone else.
“Yes, I’m here to get one.” She replied.
I
confirmed she wasn’t the person who wanted two of the bloody birds and reached
down and grabbed one of the frozen five pound dead beasts out of the bag. The
lady was standing about three feet from the door. I opened the security door,
and with my left hand stretched out to pass it to her. Well, there was just one
problem with my seemingly innocent plan. I mean after all what could go wrong?
I’m just passing off a frozen bird that had been locked in a cage for a couple
months, fattened up, had its head cut off, gutted and precisely defeathured. Like
I said, this is a happy story, what could go wrong? No one is going to get
hurt, if you don’t count the dead bird of course.
To my
shock, the kid (I heard make a slight peep earlier) face was in between his
mother and me. As I reached out with my left hand to pass over the block of
bird, BOOM right in the child’s face. I hit the kid in the nose, blood
everywhere. He was crying and screaming.
“The mean man hit me in the face with the chicken
leg, Momma!” He cried.
Channeling
my internal Smokey from Friday, I retorted,
“Daaaaaaaamn,
kid you got knocked the fuck out!”
Just
kidding! The five pound bird wacked the kid right in the kisser, but there was
thankfully no blood.
“Oh no”, I said quickly, “I’m blind, I’m so sorry!”
The aggrieved
tike didn’t make too much noise, so I knew I hadn’t hurt him too badly, but I
was still terrified. I had just hit a kid in the face with a dead animal that
was at least as hard as a bowling ball. The mom seemed a little stunned, but just
muttered something like “ok”, as I said a couple more times “I’m so sorry, I’m
blind”. I would tell you the look on her face, but you know…
Then I
addressed the kid.
“You came over to get a chicken, and got hit in the
face. Sorry about that.”
The kid
was still not crying, so I started feeling a little relief from my panic. The
mom started explaining to the kid the bird was frozen that’s why it was so hard.
I said, “My bad!” again, and started shutting the
door.
Their
truck started up, good thing the dad didn’t notice I hit his kid in the face
with a dead bird, and they walked down the steps and left. I shut the door and
just shook my head: “Blind Guy Doing Stuff”
I was
thinking about this all through the rest of the day. What could I have done to
avoid this situation? I really couldn’t come up with anything. I don’t really
want to tell every person that comes to my door about my exceptionality. I’ve
thought of wearing a hat that says “I’m Blind”, but that’s too much. In this case
I did come up with something, but it won’t help me too much in the future. I
was so caught off guard by the whole thing; my inner smart ass failed me. I
should have said to the kid and mom. “This just goes to show you kid, there’s
no such thing as a free lunch!” Oh well, maybe next time I’ll remember this
line when I hit a kid in the face with a frozen poultry product.
