5/18/2011

Gnome News Is Good News

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Story Submitted by Gaetano:

I had arranged to take Sandy out on a date on a nice summer evening. We had planned to meet at an outdoor restaurant with seating right on a river, but she called me a little before to ask me if I could meet her at a friend's house first, and a bit earlier. It was strange, but I thought it was an opportunity to spend more time with her, so I told her I'd do it.

I pulled up to a ramshackle brownstone in a bad neighborhood, full of closely-built homes with paint and siding chipping and peeling seemingly in unison. I parked my car and knocked on the rotting door to the address that Sandy had specified.

An angry-looking guy in an undershirt opened the door and yelled, "What do you want?"

I said, "I'm here for Sandy."

"No you're not!" he yelled, then slammed the door.

I called Sandy. It went to voicemail and I left a message. A minute later, she called back and said, "Come around back. We just need help setting up the lawn furniture."

I squeezed through an alleyway and found Sandy and two other guys, the first angry guy from before, and another, taller angry-looking guy, who I'll call angry guy number two. The three of then stood among a small pile of tangled lawn furniture.

The angry guys looked at me and pointed at the copious lawn ornaments scattered throughout the cramped backyard: flamingoes, gnomes, and plastic plants. They yelled, "Get those out of the way!"

I turned to Sandy and said, "If they're going to talk to me that way, then I'm leaving. What the hell is this?"

Sandy rolled her eyes at them and said, "It's fine. They just need help setting up their mother's lawn furniture."

Angry guy number two stepped closer to me and said, "Stop talking to her! Move the shit!"

I said to Sandy, "I'm going to wait for you in my car. I didn't sign up for this."

As I left the backyard, one of the angry guys yelled, "Sandy's not going to join you! She's on our lawn!"

I waited out in front, in my car, for about 10 minutes before leaving. I never heard from Sandy, so I hope that the whole lawn furniture thing worked out for her.

8 comments:

  1. I love the people that plan dates just to con others into doing work for them. This happens more often than it should...

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  2. ^ My favorite was the one we just recently had ("Jerk at Work") with the guy who said manual labor is more rewarding than a boring ol' dinner date. Some people!

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  3. No, no. These nice fellows have a point. If she's on their lawn, she automatically becomes their property. I amassed a serious collection of my friends' bikes by using this very same rule.
    Way to be a sore loser, OP. Thems the rules. Every kid knows this.

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  4. I'm with Lulu. This has happened so often that we need a new category.

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  5. Whoda thunk that this could be another reason for the "always meet in public" rule.

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  6. We get a fair number of these 'fake date to con someone into doing free work' stories, but this one has an extra nasty twist because they don't even need the help at all, two men and a woman should be completely able to arrange lawn furniture by themselves.

    Yet again, don't go on dates where there's going to be friends involved.

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  7. I wonder why the first angry guy turned him away in the beginning

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  8. The real question, Ashley, is what made him change his mind?

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