Terrible Trouble! The Barber and Pizza Place

I saw the basics of this incident with my own two eyes. But I didn't really know it was in process till I'd noticed the guy walk by three times. I was sitting on a bench uptown. By the third time the guy walked by me I looked up from my phone and started paying attention. Then I was able to piece together the previous three trips in the context of the incident.*

The guy is a guy about town, someone that if you live here you see all the time. He doesn't seem to have a ton of friends -- never a companion -- but everyone, especially businessmen, know him. He's uptown a lot, and must check in a lot with merchants. This time he was going back and forth between the pizza place and the barber shop.

He started out at the barber shop and went to get a pizza for the barber, which he delivered. But there was some problem, so he went back to the pizza place with a dollar, then back to the barber. Soon he returned to the pizza place to get a handful of napkins, then to the barber. Then he returned to the pizza place for a little container of cheese, then back. Then he returned to the pizza place for some red peppers, then back.

By now, with yet another trip, the pizza place thought maybe there was a problem. He explained that the barber was certain the pizza was supposed to have been $7, but it turned out to be $8. The extra trips back were the barber's way of recouping his dollar.

So the pizza man sent him back to the barber with a message, that the pizza was indeed $8, not $7, because extra cheese is a dollar more. The barber sent him back with a message that he hadn't asked for extra cheese, the usual amount of cheese being all he wanted. The pizza man sent back a message that naturally he wouldn't have known that. He put one little knife in the barber's back: People rarely go to the barber, and then it's always the same ones. If the barber remembers what his customers want, that's no surprise. But so many people go the pizza place, many different ones, one order's the same as any other.

Obviously this kind of nasty comment didn't sit well with the barber. Especially since their commerce is only one way, the barber ordering pizzas but the pizza guy never getting a haircut. (I'm sure I would've have a hard time holding my tongue, too.) He sent the guy back to the pizza place with a message: "Your pizza sucks anyway, whether it's $7 or $8." The pizza guy sent him back with a message in return: "Why do you think I never come in for a haircut? The looks of your haircuts aren't the greatest." Their go-between man was Exhibit A, whose head and whole manner look totally bad; he's just a guy with bad hair.

It escalated from there. The barber complained that the pizzas were often dry like cardboard, and in addition, the occasional sandwiches he'd ordered were tasteless and skimpy on meat and hefty on lettuce. The pizza guy sent a message back that haircuts in general are very boring, and that this particular barber's haircuts were the most boring. Plus, and here he was unfair, the barber's toilet paper budget must be through the roof, just to patch up nicks from shoddy shaving practices.

By now the guy had gone back and forth -- I lost track -- maybe 18-20 times. As an emissary delivering messages, he did a fine job. But in my opinion it would've be more helpful to smooth out some of the rough edges of the messages they entrusted to him.

Finally, the pizza guy thought, "The barber actually is a pretty good customer. And we've been here all these years, on friendly terms." The barber, to his credit, also thought it over, "If I don't fix this, I won't be able to order pizzas again, which means I'll either starve or have to order from someone farther away."

The barber sent the guy back to the pizza guy with a friendly word, then to smile and ask about the extra cheese thing. But before asking about the cheese, the guy admitted ordering extra cheese, not to cause trouble, but that's the way he personally orders pizza, so it had slipped his mind, causing the extra dollar charge for the barber.

Of course there's a happy ending, as seen in the picture. The pizza guy kicked the guy out once and for all, then made up with the barber, returning his dollar, who immediately went to the register and gave the pizza guy 50 cents. They both agreed that they had been good neighbors far too long to let this guy screw them up now.

------------------------------------
* An interesting moment for me, when I go from basic ignorance to omniscience

My Valuable 1941 Nickel

Somehow -- I don't want to give away too much about how I got it -- I came across a valuable old coin, a 1941 Jefferson nickel. I had change in my pocket, I emptied it out, and there it was, a genuine 1941 old coin, just like that. I didn't do a single thing, knowingly or unknowingly, to end up with it!

Before I got it I was feeling perfectly normal. After discovering it I pulled down the shades and started googling it. According to a site called "Cointrackers," there were hundreds of millions of these made. But since it's from 1941, there aren't a lot of them left in circulation.

As to the coin's value, the Cointrackers site said it ranges from 35 cents to $7.00, which is a damned lot for a nickel. $7.00! Meaning, I wasn't going to put it in a parking meter. And actually, except for this blog post, I wasn't even flashing it around willy-nilly. Only to certain people who could be trusted.

I took it around to some of the coin shops of my town. I moved all my ordinary change over to my left pocket and kept the '41 nickel alone in my right pocket. I went to Todd's Used Coins first. Todd was out for lunch, but the girl at the counter, taking a quick look at the nickel, immediately paged him, and he came right over. He looked at it, verifying for me that it was indeed a 1941 nickel, and that the visage on its face was a picture of Thomas Jefferson. He looked it up in a book, then wrote a number on a slip of paper and passed it to me. I looked and he had made me an offer of 25 cents.

I thanked Todd for his time but went on. Another place, right next door, is called the Universal Coin Emporium, or U.C.E. I went in and the owner -- the oldest guy in the shop -- met me. I asked if I could share my find with him, and he was amenable to it. He was very nice, in fact. He asked if it would be better to have a small black cloth for a background, which he provided. The nickel looked great on the cloth.

He said, "Ahhh, yes," in a very satisfied way, and checked it out carefully, front and back. He also was able to verify its province in time and place, that it was an American coin, to be precise a nickel, from 1941, with Jefferson's visage on one side. He pulled down a coin guide off the shelf and referred to it, announcing that the "tails" side was a building having to do with Jefferson called "Monticello." It looks like it has a dome on it. Very curious!

This guy -- I didn't catch his name and he didn't say -- offered me 75 cents for it, American money. I thought, you know, that's definitely a step in the right direction, but far from 7 bucks. On the other hand, he said, being a coin shop, he's buying things for resale, so he needs to make a profit. Anyway, he said, he would probably price it at $5.00, because there's some wear, and it might take him a while to sell it. When I turned down his offer, he said he might go $1.25, but not a penny more.

I wrapped it up in the black cloth and left, wanting to try one more place. A place called Dick's Coins, "If It's Money, We Want It!" emblazoned on his window, door, and even a bumper sticker on the car out front. Dick was very busy and really couldn't be bothered. But still, after I waited for an hour, making myself very conspicuous, through a lot of heavy sighing and tapping my watch, he made time for me. He came over and was very nice, "Let me see the damned thing..." He looked at it, and acted like they were a dime a dozen, to coin a phrase, and tossed it back at me.

I went slinking back to the guy at the Emporium, proudly, and told him I'd take the $1.25. And he was happy to pay it. I asked for the payment in coins, hoping to score another collectible, but they all turned out to be regular 2010-12 quarters. Nothing valuable. But enough for a couple cans of soda, pretty good for a nickel!

Bedman's Downfall

We're getting too many dancing people dressed in pizzas! They're clogging up the side of the road! It's too much! It's making me hate pizza!

What happened to the good old days, when the merchants simply waited for us to show up or had faith? They don't leave anything to chance now, taking every opportunity to stick it in our face, as though we didn't know they were there.

Probably the worst one has to be the income tax preparers. Seriously, income tax preparers dancing on the side of the road. Dressed like the Statue of Liberty, cheapening one of our best loved statues. I don't really see the point. You might stop in for a pizza on impulse, but I never just happen to be carrying tax papers and receipts.

The whole thing reminds me of the only guy I ever knew personally who was a road dancer. He's Kevin something, but to protect his anonymity I'll just call him Bedman, since that's the job he had most recently.

Kevin/Bedman actually did start as a dancing pizza, but he was just a big single slice. He told me all about it. He was full of complaints. He had what you'd call a sadistic boss, one of those guys who liked to grind it in his employees' face that he's the boss and they're the underlings. He'd be out there dancing quite a bit without a peep from his boss. But if he slacked off, Boss would call on the phone and criticize him. He was looking out his office window (a one-way mirror), so you couldn't tell when he was watching. He'd call to complain, that Kevin was "too lazy," or if he was dancing wildly, he was "too manic." "I'm paying you! I don't want to lose my reputation!" That kind of crap. In the end, he got fired.

Other jobs he had around town: He was a dancing cookie, a dancing pulled pork sandwich, a dancing oil filter, and the dancing dollar sign outside a payday check-cashing place. He didn't get fired from those jobs, but he was in demand because he could stand the changes in weather, the long hours, etc.

The last job I know about along these lines was when he became Bedman, obviously for a bed store. Bed World, Bed Universe, something like that. He was inside a big mattress, of course carved out so he'd fit in it. He was perfect, because they needed someone with strength. It's not a job for a small or even medium-sized woman, certainly. It'd take a man, or a very husky gal, and he was perfect.
 
Among the skills needed, other than carrying that much girth, is watching the wind. If southerly, you have to put the edge of the bed into it. Then be able to adapt to any shifts, along with the man-made gusts coming from traffic. Then somehow keep up a dance good enough to provoke people to come in and buy a bed. That's a lot to ask. Especially with the wind, because you've got the enormous broad surface. You have to have the skills of a cruise boat captain, or someone more competent, to keep it righted.

But what if the wind gets super tricky? A southerly breeze that shifts to the east just like that! Or that whips from the east instantly to the west, if that's possible. Or does a quadruple whammy and goes through the four directions and all the angled combinations in random order. Something like that must have happened because he definitely got flipped into the road one day.

To hear him tell it, it was terrifying. How he struggled to keep up with the wind before he fell or was pushed into the road face down. That'd be very terrifying, hearing the traffic honking, trying their best to avoid hitting him, because no one wants to mess up their car. I'm just trying to picture it. Bedman's out there struggling, flopping around. And nothing's any good. But what can he do except keep up the fight? Then somehow, thanks to the strength in his legs, he got the damned thing flipped over, which was half the battle.

Now he could at least push his head up, like a turtle, so people could see it wasn't just big debris on the road but an actual person craning his neck out to get their attention. He's doing everything he can to get to his feet, he said, when a semi truck going by helped him with a big gust of wind, pushing him back, and toppling him, on the curb. It still wasn't all the way, but far enough to keep from getting killed.

Then, getting his breath, he was able more easily to push himself with his legs all the way on to the parking strip. He said he looked up at the sky and thanked God. Then he heard the honking of geese and saw them fly by, heading south, and reflected on the miracle of life, which is a happy ending.

Kevin had a better boss at the bed store, who when he finally came out was understanding. Of course he didn't lose his job, but in fact was given an extra 5 minutes (on top of his normal 15 minute break) before waddling back out to finish his shift.