Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Two Tickets to Paradise Lost


So I'm at home last night, trying to prove my theory that Pink Floyd's Animals syncs up perfectly with The Apple Dumpling Gang, when the phone rings. Caller ID displays "Florida," so I figure it's my folks. But the 850 area code is not theirs -- it's strange and foreign. I pick up the phone and find myself trading Hellos with a gravelly voiced woman dripping cigarette-smoked drawl. Her area code is the Florida panhandle, hundreds of miles from my folks or anyone else I know in the Sunshine State.

"Ah'm callin' 'bout the two FSU season tickets fuh sale..."

Whoah, wait a minute, sister. Whoever ran the ad misprinted the area code as 856 instead of 850. This is New Jersey. No one's got FSU season tickets here.

According to the Florida State Seminoles Web site, a pair of season tickets runs $430. Why didn't I tell her to wire me the cash and then send her those unused passes to the Gordon Lightfoot laser show?

Because I'm too honest about area codes. Always have been. I get an inordinate amount of wrong numbers, yet I decline to take these rubes for all they're worth. I could've had 430 easy smackers.

But what price my soul?

2 comments:

Pat said...

You should have sold them to the person anyway. Just make a couple with crayons and construction paper. People are trusting, I am sure there would be no repercussions.

Randy said...

And been guilty of mail fraud?

No thank you.

I vowed in first grade that I'd never commit mail fraud, and I'll go to my grave upholding that oath.

(Man, my elementary school had some bizarre additions to the Pledge of Allegiance...)