Tales From My Past - That's Not Stolen, Is It?

There's something about me - the way I look, maybe the way I carry myself, maybe the way dress - that attracts crazy people, homeless people, people with some sort of agenda, and desperate people of all sorts. Now, if you add all those things together, a crazy, possibly homeless desperate person with an agenda, then you'll get something special.
   You'll get someone trying to sell stolen goods.
   It doesn't happen to me so much any more - with one recent exception - but for a while there when I was younger, I had the opportunity to buy something hot about once a month. Here are a few I can remember:

A guy trying to sell me a pickup truck bed full of auto mechanic tools while I was mowing the grass at my grandfather's rent houses. No lie. Drove right up while I was emptying the clippings and told me they would make a great Father's Day present. When I asked if they were stolen he laughed nervously and sped off. I was sixteen.

A guy trying to sell me a clarinet when I was at the Greyhound station waiting for the bus from Austin to San Antonio. He kept cajoling me, telling me he could tell I had money, even though I was taking an $8 bus ride. I finally turned my pockets inside out, showed him I had $1 on me, and said if he'd take a dollar for it, I'd love the clarinet. I was eighteen.

A guy in Sherman, TX trying to sell me a ditch witch, you know, one of those cool, rentable power tools that you can use to dig a trench? I was at the Wal-Mart buying shampoo and Pringles (really), and as I was leaving he drove up with the ditch witch on a little trailer. Said I could have it for $100, and that I'd make my money back with a good weekend's work. I told him if he could figure out a way to sneak it into my dorm room I could find a hundred bucks. I was twenty.

Two guys in Rome tried to sell me tickets to something. Since I barely spoke Italian and I read it even worse I had no idea what they were tickets for. But since they were trying to sell them to me around midnight as I was taking pictures of St. Peter's, I'm pretty sure they were stolen. I was twenty-seven.

A woman in O'Fallon, IL - if you've never been, don't bother - tried to sell me a box of cigarettes. Not a carton, a box full of cartons, probably a gross of cigarette packs. Camels. She started at $300 and worked her way down to $75 as I repeated over and over that I didn't smoke. When I asked her if they were stolen she told me she got them from an Indian reservation, which didn't really answer my question. I never did check to see if there was a reservation around there. I was twenty-nine.

A scary-looking little Japanese guy in Okinawa tried to sell me stereo equipment. He spoke English very well, and I could see the tattoos peeking out from under his long-sleeved shirt. I was extremely polite to him as I refused his business, explaining that Japanese electronics wouldn't work when plugged into American power outlets. I ran back to Kadena AFB and locked my billet door. I was thirty-one.