Monica, was bereft and on the verge of crying. She had just visited a number of restaurants and bars. She was hoping to see her art sharing the walls with and a stack of money from art sales. She had just turned 21 on Thursday and no one at work had noticed. She called in sick Friday morning now it was mid-afternoon on Friday, so in reality she hadn’t seen too much of anything, but when you’re feeling sad, it doesn’t really matter.
It was just one in the afternoon. She pulled into a Hobby Lobby department store parking area and then zipped up and down the aisles looking for art, art supplies, and anyone remotely close to looking like anyone interested in anything that caught the eye. She pulled out her sketching pad and from across several rows created caricatures of the people she saw. When she approached people to show them her work, the look of fear and just plain “get the Hell out of my face” responses soon made her even sadder. Of course being led out of the store by the assistant manager didn’t help her attitude at all.
Once back in her car, Monica just looked around the parking lot and caught the sight of a Dollar Tree store. She had been there before and didn’t like it . . . it was sloppy and had only some stuff the larger Dollar Tree stores had. She drove to one of the larger stores and found a plethora of products to squelch her taste for art and adventure. She chose easy clean up tools and various bottles of painting mixes. An idea began forming in her mind. The idea took her to South Tacoma Way.
South Tacoma Way runs north and south with lots of things for sale on almost every single block. Her mind was clambering for adventure. Her mind went wild each time she had to stop at a traffic light, but eventually she realized that each traffic stop brought her almost every single time to a used car lot. She wrote down the names and address of over twenty car places that were open and operating. She went back and parked and walked quickly around the cars for sale and then went to the next one to check it out. She had a plan . . . a wild, near crazy plan.
While munching on a burger she thought about an offer to make. One of the car lots had plenty of cars, but no one looking at anything had seemed even remotely interested. That became her target. Just before the car lot closed down she gave them a proposal. “No Deal, No Sale” – “Thumbs Up, Immediate Cash!”
As soon as the sun came up on Saturday, Monica was working. The owner had given her a list of cars that were all in decent condition and the lowest price with taxes. Each car had gas and was ready to go. By Saturday morning Monica had three cars lined up; each with the eye catching art quality offering a smart laughable comment like the old Burma shave signs from decades ago. The art and graphics were painted on each side of the car length. The art work was easy to clean off . . . if desired. At nine Monica drove the first car through four stop lights and returned. When she returned the second car, the first was already being dickered for. She replaced the first sale car with a second, third, and fourth and then drove them through the next four stop lights. When she came back two of the cars had already been sold. She went out the third time and then the fourth . . . and it went on through the day.
By closing Monica was so tired she could barely sign the offer giving her a percentage of each sale for any car that was purchased on the lot. In addition she placed pieces of her art for sale at the car lot, and gave the car lot a percentage of any art sale . . . after all “Why Not?”
