So in the past three days I've seen the same man twice. Once in the grocery store parking lot on Saturday and then again today in the parking lot of Mitchell's Ice Cream. Now here is the odd thing about this man he was selling brightly painted miniature guitars. Now they could have been ukuleles, I don't really know. I played the ukulele when I was in grade school. No I didn't grow up in Hawaii. Instead, my elementary school got an arts grant when I was in the 3rd grade or so and one of the things they did with the grant was buy a classroom supply of ukuleles. (So while everyone else was learning to play the recorder I was learning to play the ukulele.) All I really remember was learning to play "Hang Down Your Head Tom Dooley." We played them as a group in front of the whole school when I was in the 4th grade--a little ukulele choir. I think ukuleles have fewer strings than guitars but I don't know that for sure. And what I'm really saying is that I didn't get close enough to the hispanic guitar/ukulele salesman to know what he was actually selling. But I was close enough to see that they were painted bright pinks and blues and greens. He was toting them around in a big black bag. Now here is my question: who buys a guitar/ukulele from a man on the street? Who, just coming out of the grocery store after having bought their chicken cutlets, fruit loops, and max pads, realizes that the one thing they forgot in the Safeway was a bright green guitar? Or who, while enjoying a delicious ice cream cone when someone asks them "would you like a ukulele with that?" says "yes." That is just crazy. And where else is he hocking his wares? Is there such a great demand for them that a whole army of salespeople are blanketing the city, the country, the globe? Right now is there a man selling mini-guitars in Zimbabwe? Alright, I'm guessing not. But seriously is this a new trend? Are mini-guitars the new encyclopedias? Or is this just a squeegee guy who is thinking out of the box? (For those of you who don't know about squeegee guys they are guys who in big cities when you pull up to a red light jump out in the street and start cleaning your windshield so that you will give them money. We don't have them in San Francisco, but I've seen them in other big cities.) Maybe we have street guitar salespeople instead.
It seems really appropriate to end this post with the query: "What will they come up with next?"
Peace out!
2 comments:
by the way, it's Maxi-pads, not max pads. I know you aren't a big supporter of Always brand but as a woman I was a bit troubled that you would label our necessities with a male name. what happened to gender equality???!!!! jk!
Sorry, grammatical error--typing too fast. I did not mean to label anything with a male name. Although, I do think you made an assumption about the name max. What about Maxine?
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