March 1, 2010
To conjure an image of the world before computers is to invite a sympathetic tsk and a bemused smile, naturally from the young but often from analog age-mates as well. It's like evoking the days of stagecoach holdups, ice-storm outhouses and surgery without anesthesia: *yes they managed, but how?* Frankly, we can't remember. We were too busy splitting wood, trapping beavers and trudging through snowbanks to one-room schoolhouses to have time for the formation of frivolous childhood memories. So I was plenty stumped this weekend as I attempted to recall how in the world commerce occurred in the days before Craigslist... How did we get things we couldn't afford to buy in stores? What did we do with our left-over stuff? Beats me. I imagine we did without, god damn it, and burned our clutter for fuel. We were men then.
I have had two occasions of late to offer items in the "free" section of CL, and both have offered insight into the very spleen and kidneys of our digital economy. Both give-aways were of marginal value: one, an old basketball pole and backboard removed from our driveway after years of disuse; the other a hideous, faux-wood vinyl screen used to create a place to store trash cans--the sort of thing that looks like a right-smart idea at the Home Depot and becomes an instant embarrassment once it's assembled in all of its cheap, tacky glory. For both items I snapped a few photos, uploaded them on CL's user-happy ad-posting page and sent my offer into the cybersphere. And in both cases, within a few minutes--a very few minutes; the space in one instance of a cup of coffee, in the other the period between two time-outs in a college basketball game--my email in-box was flooded with responses, as in, more email in an eye wink than I normally would receive in a week. A month. More. Sad, but true.
I've had a number of short stories posted online over the years. I've had a couple of web sites, a dozen Youtube videos (music performances), the occasional blog response, a Facebook page, a Myspace page (speaking of yesteryear), various letters to editors, announcements of writing contest prizes and upcoming concerts, and two CD's offered on cdbaby.com, Amazon, and so on. These on-line offerings have been globally available to anyone with a computer and a modem. Yet I doubt that the aggregate response related to all of these digital endeavors equals the number of replies I received to the local gratis offering of a used hoop and an ugly plastic fence. And what impassioned replies. One fellow sent a picture of his daughters, future WBNA hopefuls; another sent one of the lovely garden the screen would so perfectly protect. The "pleases" and "pretty pleases" and "call-me immediatelys" in the emails exceed the weekly politeness quotient of a 19th century Baltimore charm school. The sincerity is real. The need is palpable. The world is a mysterious place.
People just don't want this stuff. They want it ASAP, now, desperately, first thing in the morning, anytime and tonight if it's not too late. They want it disassembled to fit into their hatchbacks, they want it assembled so they don't have to and they want for someone to be home to help them load it. They want it for their kids, their grand kids, their nephews, their mothers and their day cares. They want it, as the old song goes, like a fat boy wants his pie.
By the time I have replied to all of the inquiries I am exhausted, and miserable that I have only got one of the items to give away. The collective neediness of the late responders especially leaves me weak and jittery. When someone actually comes through and makes a pickup, I feel not happy to have enriched one person's need, however meagerly, but devastated and guilty to have failed so many. Perhaps I should stop at the Home Depot and buy as many screens as my own hatchback will hold, and keep the ad up another day? Perhaps I should hang on to the stuff for myself, rather than have to choose one winner among so many hopefuls? It is all too much for me on a Monday. On any day. Now I know why people hoard useless things; basements of trash and stacks of old newspapers and empty beer cans and plastic grocery bags and broken toys and eight track tapes. It just hurts too much to part with them.
This all got me thinking about my impending book release: Perhaps if I offer my new novel for free? On Craigslist, of course. Think how happy I'll be with the line of cars inching past my driveway, plucking a complimentary book and --yes, why not? a cup of ice-cold lemonade--from a couple of card tables on the parking strip. "Thank you!" I'll holler, rushing to the curb with a plate of fresh brownies. But eventually the books will gone, the print run exhausted, the Dixie cups depleted, the brownies just crumbs. And of course they'll keep coming. And I'll have to write another one.
Such is the source of my literary inspiration.
