We’ve all seen the exhausting movies or television shows: A family will lose something if they don’t raise money quickly to pay it off. This something is usually the house to a foreclosure, the family business to taxes or Dad to his gambling debts.
Well, something like that happened to me, only it wasn’t lapsed payments or taxes for which I needed the money. I had gotten myself involved in a series of experiments involving mannequins and performance-enhancing drugs. I needed cash for some anabolic steroids, a horse tranquilizer and a few amphetamines. But given the illicit nature of its use, the money had to be undetectable.
I needed to be creative. But most of all I needed to be discreet and inconspicuous.
Operation Stampout
During this operation, I jumped the neighborhood mailman, taking his uniform and his mail sack. I peeled off all the stamps, then delivered the entire sack of mail postage-due. I managed to collect $11 before the authorities seized the remaining mail and shut down the operation.
I managed to keep the uniform, but ultimately returned the mailman’s hair piece. We’re friends now.
Operation Paper Boy
With this plan I made my rounds of the neighborhood at 6:05 a.m. sharp to collect the day’s newspaper off each driveway. I then headed straight to one of a number of street corners to sell the papers at full price. This was by far the easiest and most profitable scheme, dropping a sum of $414 in the mannequin fund. I considered using this as full-time employment until I was accosted by a newspaper subscriber.
Apparently he had been watching me from the top of his flag pole for a couple of mornings. I was picking up his paper as usual. Taking advantage of my vulnerable position at the base, he repelled down the pole and performed a leg tackle that he later claimed to learn in the United States Marine Corps.
A brief scuffle ensued but ended when I forced the newspaper bag over his head as he was stuffing the entire comics page into my mouth. I spit out the page, worked the Jumble, then fled.
Operation No Parking
In my final attempt to raise funds, I decided to help the city, pad my pockets, and teach people a sound lesson at the same time. For three days, I patrolled the city streets looking for illegally parked cars and issued replica parking tickets. The only difference between my parking tickets and the city’s was the part that said who to make the check out to and where to mail it. Whereas the real parking tickets said to make checks payable to “County Clerk,” mine said to make checks payable to “Mannequin Steroid Fund” and to send it to my home address. An amazing 49 people went for it.
Sadly, it was busted up when I inadvertently ticketed the county clerk’s car. He paid the parking ticket, but later realized his error through a series of letters I sent him making fun of his checks (they featured Richard Simmons in various sports themes).
Sometimes you just need to let things go, but it’s not every day that you can hassle someone in a respectable government position over their Richard Simmons checks.
Did I ever complete the mannequin experiment? The short answer is no. The money I managed to raise I used to pay off gambling debts. I was glad I had the cash on hand because I was 24 hours from being put through a wood chipper.
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