Going, going, gone!!

I don't remember if I ever told the story about the mysterious gym mat that came to us last fall.

If I did, then I'm sorry to repeat it. If I didn't then we're all good. :)

So....

Last fall was home-coming and Kelani had been asked to the dance and was all excited to go since it was her first date (hopefully I'm remembering that part right...).

Saturday morning came, the morning of the dance, and it was discovered first thing, that there was no way we'd be able to leave our house through the front door.

Why?

Because this lovely blob had been stealthily placed in front of the door sometime in the middle of the night.

 We were all giving Kelani a hard time because we were sure it was some kind of lame "home-coming prank" or whatever. But after Kelani drilled her date over and over, using different types of lie-detecting methods, and light forms of torture (ok, that's totally an exaggeration) we knew it wasn't her date and that he had no clue what she was talking about.
  The real question we had to deal with was, "What do we do with it now?" I mean, look at that thing. It's a monster!! And since we didn't know where it came from, we weren't sure of how it got to be theirs in the first place. What if some enraged Olympic gymnastic trainer showed up at our house one day and suspected us of swiping his training mat?! We couldn't have that.
   So for the time being, we folded it up (when I say "we" I'm not really including myself, because I didn't actually take part in that process) and stuffed it into the garage.
  And it lived there for weeks. Then months.
Then several months later it was somehow learned that a few of David's completely crazy friends had been hanging out one night and decided to see what kind of free stuff they could find on Craigslist.
  This is the creative activity that goes on when you get a group of teen-age boys together, allow them access to the internet, and keep them up past midnight.
  They found this little beauty and decided they had to have it. So they loaded up into one of the guys' trucks and decided to make their own destiny by becoming the owners of the gym mat.
  Unfortunately for us, their ownership was short-lived because as soon as they had it, they decided it would look better sitting on our doorstep - which is right where we found it the next morning!! :)
  Once we knew who had done it, everything made much more sense and was even funnier than it had been all along!!
  ANYWAY - after all these months of it occupying our garage, we finally decided it was time for a parting of the ways. But how would we ditch it? Why not start with the way it was found in the first place? Put it back on Craigslist under "free stuff".
  Dad called me from work and asked if I could put an ad for it on Craigslist along with his cell number, in the hopes that there would be someone out there just dying to have a dirty old gym mat.
  Here's the ad I came up with:

"Come and pick up a HUGE, slightly used (unstitched in a few places) gym/jump mat. It's free and available for all your jumping pleasure! :) If nothing else, it makes a good prank item (which is how we acquired it in the first place), such as a front door stop.....

   Its lovely blue color is sure to attract attention, if the size of this beast fails to do so.

 The possibilities are endless, so stop by to pick up this gym mat of wonder for frrrreeeeee!!!"

I put that on there, a long with the picture of it blocking our door, and then I hoped for the best.

    About 45 minutes later Dad called from work again and told me,

"Emergency, emergency!!! Take the ad off quick, I just got three phone calls in a row for that thing!!" You can't be serious! People actually wanted it?

  Well, it's time to tell you the sad ending of this outlandish story. A couple people came by to see it, but in the end, no one actually wanted it. Which was not surprising. But by now we were so ready to send it on its way that Dad decided just to load it up and take it to the dump. I'm sure it makes a grand landing pad for all those weary seagulls who inhabit the dump in hopes of finding a good meal.

  Is there a moral to this story? Um, no.

Except maybe that you should always be prepared to wake up and find something un-expected at your door, because you just never know.....