The last few days people have been putting stuff out in their yards for bulk pick day. It's one of my favorite times of the year. It's so exciting all the things you can find. So, I get a phone call from one of my friends and he tells me about a sweet find just under the hill. It's a few old school looking big wheels tricycles. You know, the ones for little kids? There were 4 of them and he figured we could fix them up and do something cool with them. I find the spot, pretty close to the corner of Barton Springs and Boldin, and start loading the newly found treasures up. I get one in the back of my jeep and I see this old man with a limp walking briskly towards me. Me, being the sweet sweet Chloe I am (heh), smiles and greets the gimp old man with a friendly, "How are ya?"
"Just gettin some bikes," he replies flatly.
Oooooh, I thought to myself. Crap.
"Ok," I hesitated. "Well...(elongate the L)We can half them." I offered with a shrug.
Never again will I compromise so easily with a stranger. Right after that, the man reached into the pile of goodies. He grabbed the two bikes that were clearly in the best shape and starts walking off, leaving me with the clearly crappiest one.
"Ummm." I said as I looked sadly at the bike.
He turns back around and looks me dead in the eye. "That's two, right?" He says in a stern, rhetorical tone.
He knows what he has done.
My response was quiet and pathetic, I'm sad to report, and the old man walked away with the bikes.
So why the heck didn't I stand up for myself?
I didn't want to half the bikes with this stranger.
Why did I do it?
I was there first. I honestly didn't even have to offer the douche anything and it wasn't until he was gone that I realized what I let him get away with. I had been a push over. That dirty man walked all over my kindness.
So I learned my lesson. Next time I find myself in a situation like that the outcome will certainly NOT be the same. Fire will blow out of my mouth and my hair will turn into snakes before the perpetrator walks away.
Oh life. Thanks for teaching me, I'm a quick learner. I wont let you down.
-Chloe
