Queen Street Stories,

part 3

Gaming the system

Sunday

One of the nice things about the accordion is that it’s made me rather identifiable to the shopkeepers, waitstaff and bartenders at the shops, restaurants and bars on Queen Street. I’ve struck up some casual friendships with a fair number of them. I often drop by this one particualr store, as they carry something I buy regularly and have cute staff.

“So what’s new?” I asked my friend at the counter.

“I got the neatest present from my boyfriend the other day. It was a [toy name deleted to protect the not-so-innocent] and a video of [character name deleted to protect the not-so-innocent].”

“They made toy versions of [character name deleted to protect the not-so-innocent]?”

“They did. I didn’t know that, either.”

“What inspired him to give it to you?”

“We rented this video the other night, and you know how they put ads for other videos at the start of videos these days? One of them was for [character name deleted to protect the not-so-innocent]. It was so sad and cheesy and hilarious that we spent the next twenty minutes rewinding the tape and watching it over and over again. So my boyfriend decided that he’d see if the video of [character name deleted to protect the not-so-innocent] was available on eBay. It turns out that someone was selling not only the video, but a toy version too!”

“Good old eBay. Was it expensive? You know how it is — the rarer the item, the more obsessive the collectors.”

“That was a problem. There were two other bidders for [toy name deleted to protect the not-so-innocent], and he was sure he was going to be outbid. So he wrote the other two bidders and e-mail and came up with this total lie that he was buying [toy name deleted to protect the not-so-innocent] for his son who was — get this — terminally ill with cancer!”

“Holy shit!”

There was a moment of silence before I asked: “Uh, did it work?”

“Yes. In fact, the two other bidders were incredibly sweet, and e-mailed back saying ‘Of course you can win the bid!’ and wishing his ‘son’ well. I think they even sent a card.”

“So your gift is tainted then, isn’t it?”

“Well, my boyfriend felt so guilty that he donated $300 to Save the Children.”

“I guess that’s one way to tip the scales back in the right direction. But in the end, it might’ve been cheaper for him to win the bid honestly.”

“Yeah,” she said, and then broke into a smile. “But I know that my man’s willing to lie, cheat and steal for me.”

We should all be so lucky.