I lost $25 monday night, and I blame it on the fact that I am
not using online search this week. In case you're just tuning in, I'm running a little experiment this week testing the importance of search marketing and business blogging.
You might blame this loss of $25 on my naivety, my inability to say no, or my willingness to trust in the good nature of all mankind. But I blame it on not Googling for an entire week.
What happened? I was pumping gas Monday night on Indy's west side, around 6pm, minding my business, when a middle aged man in a flannel and jeans approached my auto. He looked like a slightly more weathered Jim Crocce, but with red hair, and a massive beard. So maybe more like a lumberjack.
[note: I would put a picture of Jim Crocce or a lumberjack here, but I'm not using search this week, and i have no clue how I would accomplish such an insertion.]"Oh you went to DePauw? I saw your plates. I went to Purdue, great school that DePauw, I know it well..." This red hairy man continued about our respective Indiana schools, and I listened. Then he told me he was a farmer, at an organic milk farm in laffayette. he was in a sticky situation because he had a dead cow in a truck down the road that ran out of gas. He needed $18-33 dollars precisely to get his dead cow and his empty truck back to his organic dairy farm before there was trouble.
"I know what you're thinking, I'm just gonna use the money for booze or crack. But I don't smoke crack any more, and anyway, I promise you I'm a cow farmer, just smell my clothes." His clothes did in fact smell like those of a cow farmer's. An organic one at that.
"Have you ever seen a cow placenta?" he asked me. I said no. But I was beginning to really believe that he was a cow farmer.
The man repeated the name of his organic dairy farm a few times, telling me that he didnt have the cash because he left in such a hurry, but if I loaned it to him, he would take my phone number, and have Stacey, the farm's receptionist, arrange to wire me the money the following day. Not only that, he said if I gave him the money, he'd arrange some free organic milk to be shipped my way, and even offered to take me and my friends fishing on his awesome fishing boat.
"No drinking on the boat, though."
Well, like I said, I
[used to] trust in the good will of
all mankind, even dairy farmers. So I gave this guy $25, with obvious hesitation, but I did it. He wrote my first name and phone number on the palm of his soiled hand so that Stacey could call me and arrange the money wiring.
I realized as I drove off and saw the man with the manure-eating grin on his face, that maybe, just maybe, I wasn't going to see that money ever again. I've done so many dumb things in my life, but if you were to
Google "the top 10 stupedist things mikey mioduski has ever done," this would surely make the list.
It is my feeling that if I could search "organic dairy farms laffayette, indiana" maybe I could at least make myself feel like less of an idiot. I can't remember the name of the farm, but chances are if I found a list of a few, one might ring a bell. But I'm not using online search engines this week, so until I come up with another way to figure out the name of that imaginary farm, I will just have to wait on that call from Stacey.