The Best Things In Life Are Free (On Craigslist)

You can't buy class, but if you are a size L man interested in decorating yourself with an entire colony of slaughtered rabbits, you can buy this coat and look like a yetti with leprosy for just $300!



If that doesn't whet your appetite or fit into your budget, you can always get 52 yogurt cups for free.

52 Yogurt Cups (Spencerport)

Reply to: sale-1051385941@craigslist.org
Date: 2009-02-26, 11:20AM EST

Not sure why I have saved these but I have! If you want them, email me right away 'cause they are headed to the recycle bin.

[Cue "suspicious eyes" and crickets chirping]

Other things you can find for free (or a small nominal price):
Broken Floor Console TVs
Stalkers
Mother of the bride dresses from 1992
Never-worn (or sometimes worn) wedding gowns
Part time dead-end jobs (of which I've found 3 in my life, thankyouverymuch.)
"Beautiful" engagement rings - "Like New!"
"Platonic" friends (I'm sure)
Everything else you never wanted but might take just because it cost $1

Thus is the joy of Craigslist. If you don't know what Craigslist is, you need to get acquainted with it ASAP if for no other purpose than hours of entertainment at the expense of the crazy people that live in your neighborhood. Craigslist is basically online classified ads and forums for the socially inept. It was started by a guy named Craig (imagine!) in San Francisco and has since spread to every major and not-so-major metropolitan area in the fifty states and abroad.

Craigslist is probably best known for its Missed Connections section, in which people try to locate their proverbial "ones that got away" with romantic messages akin to this:

Couger in Walmart - m4w - 55 (Greece)

Reply to: pers-1050831973@craigslist.org

Date: 2009-02-25, 9:01PM EST

I saw you at the returns department at Walmart at night. We made numerous eye contact with each other. Would like to get in touch with you.

Now what woman/"Couger" in her right mind wouldn't be swept off their feet by such a cryptic message from a mysterious 55 year-old Walmart shopper in Greece, NY? To those of us not involved, it's funny, and Missed Connections are occasionally sort of sweet...almost. But to the recipients of such affection, it's not always so warm and fuzzy. I know someone who once got "missed connections"-ed and well, he was just sort of creeped out. He also pointed out that the irony in the fact that someone else thought there was a connection, while he has no recollection whatsoever of anyone else even being present at the time.

I might add that a lot of the missed connections are homosexual, as in some guy is posting who had "a moment" with another guy. My guess is that the guy on the receiving end had no idea that you're gay, and was probably just being polite when he asked if you wanted cheese while he was making your sandwich at Bruegger's last Tuesday. But guys in general, regardless of the team they're on, seem to have overly active senses of connection feeling. I might suggest we all start wearing nametags so as to clear up this sort of confusion and avoid all the future awkward postings and crushed hopes. That way we can all let the world know what our deal is. We could choose from the traditional ones like M4M, M4W, W4M, W4W, or the more avant-garde such as "Taken" or "Not Interested In Meeting You Just Because We Are Both Currently Shopping At The Same TJ Maxx" or "If You're Reading This, You've Already Spent Too Much Time Looking At Me. I'm Reaching For My Mace Now."

The moral of the story is that the majority of people on Craigslist, not all that unlike circus people, are delusional and not to be trusted, whether it be because they feel non-existent vibes or are trying to sell you something they likely found in their apartment building's trash room that they are convinced is "a steal", "worth well over" $6 dollars, but are going to cut you a deal and sell it for "$4 CASH ONLY NO ECCEPTIONS" (their exemplary spelling skills, not mine) and are willing to meet "IN A PUBLIC NEUTRAL LOCATION". The real missed connection here is the one that should be between the seller's brain and his typing hands which is regrettably absent.

Here's my question: why do these people think that all that time and effort is worth $2? Or more realistically, $0, because in reality, no one will want that stupid baby snowsuit your son outgrew five years ago. And who is going to go to the effort of tracking down a $107.99 gift card to Sears and then paying $100 cash for it? (An INCREDIBLE [almost] $8 savings.) The answer, of course, is only a crazy person such as yourself, which is why you thought it was a good idea to post that sort of thing on Craigslist in the first place.

People, this is why the Salvation Army was invented. So that you could take your useless/broken/out of style crap, chuck it in the collection dumpster behind the HSBC, and let their underpaid employees do the work of finding a suitable purchaser for said items, thereby freeing you of clutter and allowing you to walk away with a sense of self-satisfaction that the underprivileged in your community will eat 75 cents worth of food thanks to your incomplete candlestick set that Aunt Rita (may she rest in peace) gave you for your wedding shower in 1978. I'm willing to bet Aunt Rita would be much more proud of you donating her candlesticks to a good cause than trying to hawk them for an amount of money that won't even buy you your next pack of Newports or 24 oz plastic bottle of Pepsi.

There is something to be learned from the people who post their junk in the "free section", and that valuable lesson is: 'tis better to give than to swindle for the amount of money you probably have, in change, currently hiding under your couch cushions.