Thursday, August 2, 2012

No. 672 – Fall Out

Performer: The Police
Songwriter: Stewart Copeland
Original Release: Single
Year: 1977
Definitive Version: The Police Live!, 1995

I always assumed that The Police’s first single was Roxanne; didn’t you? You might know this, but it was this song, and it wasn’t even a Sting tune.

When I moved out of my German Village apartment to move in with Debbie, I had a bit of a conundrum. I had a sofa that I wanted to dump—the sofa that effected my moving in with Debbie, as I noted earlier. I asked my landlord—a husband and wife—if they wanted to buy it for $25 to pass along to the next tenant.

They didn’t, but they said they would pay me the $25 if I agreed to pull all the weeds that had sprouted in my nonexistent backyard garden to the complaints of neighbors. (This was the first I had heard about such complaints.) Well, I wanted the extra $25, so I said I would do that.

Meanwhile, given the lack of sales options, I called The Salvation Army, and they said they’d send someone over after I had moved all my other furniture out to pick it up.

With that more or less resolved, I set about cleaning out the garden, and it didn’t take long to learn that this was going to be a real chore. I quickly discovered that the weeds that had taken root in my garden had REALLY taken root. They were all interconnected, and they were tough, almost like those of a tree. I’d start pulling, and this long string would come out of the ground. I’d have to pull and pull before it finally snapped, with me nearly falling on my butt. But I’d agreed to the deal, and once I started, I had to finish.

The first of two gardens took most of the day, and the second garden was bigger and had more weeds. It was going to take another day—the last day I’d be in the apartment.

And while this was going on, no one had come to pick up the sofa. I called again, and the person on the other end of the line said they had too many pickups that day and would have to come Monday, because they weren’t open on Sunday.

Well, that’s no good, because I have to be out tomorrow (Sunday), so you’ll have to deal with the landlords. The voice at the other end of the line apologized but said that was the best they could do. Mental note: Don’t bother with The Salvation Army again when it comes to trying to make donations. They obviously are making enough to not need my contribution.

So I called the landlords again and explained the situation: The Salvation Army blew me off, so the sofa, which I can’t move by myself out to the alleyway, is still in the apartment. The Salvation Army would come and get it Monday. The gardens, however, would be cleared out. The landlords weren’t happy about having to come over on Monday to let in The Salvation Army, but they said they’d take care of it. That, I thought, was that.

I don’t know what all happened that Monday, but I do know that when I got my security deposit check a few weeks later, it was for the original amount—no extra $25. The landlords included a note saying that removing the sofa turned out to be such a hassle that they were reneging on the extra payment for cleaning the gardens. For all I know, they just took the sofa themselves and pocketed the extra $25.

And it turns out that the sofa saga was only the second-weirdest development of when I moved out of German Village. Wait till you get a load of what happened on The Salvation Army’s day off.

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