hang up
I had a friend for a while that was never confident that I really liked him. I tried to tell him that I never even thought about it—but after he kept on bringing it up it wasn’t true anymore. I started thinking about it and realized he made me feel uncomfortable. He told me once that he made a list of all his best friends and that I was on that list, but that he thought about what my list must look like and didn’t think that his name was on it. He waited to say this until I was in his truck an hour from home. After that I kind of kept my distance. I hadn’t talked to him for about three months and then all of the sudden he’s on the phone with me asking how things have been. I was in the middle of being at a loss for words when he told me that he’d been earning some extra money recently and that he thought I’d be interested in hearing about a great money making opportunity. I groaned. I had a girlfriend about eight years ago that went in for something similar. I can’t really remember what either of them told me we’d be selling together, but my ex girlfriend started never being able to spend time with me because she was always at some rich guy’s house to learn how to run her own business. The rich guy had an outdoor pool and basketball court. He had a grill and a big patio for everyone to sit and eat his hamburgers while he told them how he used to salt the fries at BurgerTown until one day he started his own business and now look, he’s got on a fancy apron and he’s flipping burgers on his own time. Well, I was never really too excited about the program. People that join pyramid schemes never recognize the distance that is or isn’t between people. They don’t realize that having someone to talk to or eat a hamburger with is something that you can’t quite put a dollar sign on. People like that can’t eat a hamburger with their own brother without worrying about how much it’s costing them. So, when the guy was telling me about how having this business was sort of like having someone from the treasury department show up at the front door with briefcases full of money all the time, I hung up the phone.
