"There's no Such thing as a Free Lunch Kid!"

      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.