Get Rich Quick Three: Lonesome Glove
So far my attempts to get rich quickly have been in vain. Well I have not really attempted them, but in my imagination they went horribly awry so I have come up with a few new ideas in the hopes that I can still get rich quick.
One idea that I thought of was to buy thousands of pairs of gloves and cases of glitter and assemble gloves resembling the one worn by Michael Jackson. It seemed like a good idea. Maybe it was a little opportunistic and slightly sleazy, but I am desperate to get rich so I went about it anyway.
The first problem I came upon was that Michael only wore one glove. but I set about calling up various glove manufacturers to see if I could get a discount if I bought a large quantity of left-handed gloves. It was shocking to hear the level of venom that was spewed by the glove companies over what I thought to be a reasonable request.
I was perplexed. How did Michael manage to purchase a single glove for all these years? I was pretty sure he did not switch hands every other day for frugality’s sake. Well he was famously terrible with money. He bought extravagant things that he could not afford so it is possible that he would buy a pair of gloves, keep one and throw out the mate. I know to regular people like you and me that sounds wasteful, but celebrities don’t think that way or at least they didn’t in the 1980’s. I believe Hugh Hefner used to do the same thing back in the 80’s. He would invite a playmate or a famous starlet and her mate to a party and then he would throw out the mate. (Drum roll)
Unfortunately I was unable to come to an agreement with any glove manufacturer on single gloves and would instead have to buy them in pairs. I planned to use the one glove to be sold as a Michael Jackson glove and I would have to figure out something to do with the other one later. Maybe it could be sold in the discount bin as irregular or maybe there were more people like me who did not remember which hand Michael wore his glove on. Either way one thing was certain millions of people would soon be walking the streets with one glove on. At first it would be symbolic of their feelings of loss for Michael Jackson and then they would get used to the glove and much like the feeling one gets with a Lance Armstrong bracelet or a watch if you wear it for long enough you begin to feel naked without it.
I knew I should get started on the gloves, but when I started getting the shipments of gloves I was a little overwhelmed. Instead of coming up with a plan to mass produce all of these gloves I bought I instead became obsessed with coming up with a plan for what to do with the other gloves.
I thought of donating the spare glove to the homeless. For a brief moment I was proud of myself. It was a win-win. I could get rid of the gloves and maybe get a tax write off and the homeless would have a glove to help keep warm.
As I started to work on the gloves I had this awful feeling that my plan was flawed in some way, but try as I might to find this flaw in my design I could not. It took me way longer than I anticipated to make these gloves, maybe that was it.
As I was finishing up the 100th glove I decided to take a break and watch some television to relax. There was not much on so I decided to watch an old Seinfeld episode. Then it hit me like a ton of bricks, the muffin top episode. That was what I was trying to remember. Elaine tried to give the bottoms of the muffins to the homeless shelter, but the lady was offended. The homeless did not want to eat the muffin bottoms sans the top. Which reminded me of this girl from college. She had a muffin top, but in spite of or possibly because of it I still found her to be incredibly attractive. I guess that is the moral of the story, people like muffin tops. No that is definitely not it actually in the case of women that was the one time I found it pleasing, but really in hindsight she probably would have been more attractive sans muffin top. I apologize for getting off track and for using the word sans twice in one paragraph.
Anyway my point is I can imagine they would not like to receive one glove without a mate. That would probably be awfully depressing. Living out on the street with only one glove by yourself without a mate for you or your glove. It’s heartbreaking, really if you think about it.
Note to self: remember to write Christmas special for the Hallmark Channel based on this idea.
In the Seinfeld episode they eventually give away the puffy pirate shirts to the homeless. This was quite comical on the show. The thought never crossed my mind to glitter both gloves and give the Jackson glove to the homeless, although it would have made for a great ending to a Seinfeld show to have the homeless wearing a Michael Jackson glittery glove. As funny as the image may be in abstract. In reality it would be horrible publicity for my new product.
I managed to table the spare glove problem for a later time. The most important part of any new product is marketing. I had just the plan. I had just seen a promo for a new show with Billy Mays, the enthusiastic pitchman for products such as the big city slider. If I could get Billy Mays to pitch my show that would solve all of my problems. Billy Mays could probably even sell the wrong-handed Michael Jackson glove he is such a good salesman. For those of you who thought that was a shot at left-handed people it was not. Sure they are the work of the devil, but in this case I believed it was the left-hand Jackson wore his glove on and I was referring to a right-handed glove as being wrong-handed.
As I later learned it was the right hand that Jackson wore his glove on, so it was not a misnomer to call the left hand wrong-handed. Of course I also later heard the news about Billy Mays passing away.
As I sit here and reflect on another failure in my quest to become rich I am somewhat disheartened. I thought it was a can’t miss get rich quick scheme. Sure it sounds negative when you put it that way, but really a scheme is just a strategy I’m not sure when a negative connotation was given to the word scheme. Well maybe it is not always used in that manner. Sure there are paint schemes or floral schemes and people don’t think of those as negative, but when placed after get rich quick it has a negative connotation. Nobody asks what kind of crazy get paint on the wall scheme you are going to come up with next. When Bill Gates made billions selling Windows, people didn’t chastise him for his get rich quick scheme. Really that phrase is usually only used when the scheme fails. I don’t accept that and I will continue to use it to describe my quest for riches.
I was pleased when I was walking down the street today to see that no one was wearing a Michael Jackson glove. Sure it was upsetting to know that I could have provided that glove to them if I had better planned my strategy. In hindsight it is easy to criticize. I know I could have probably done a Google Image search and checked which hand he wore the glove on. My depression over not seeing anyone wearing the glove was soon gone after I realized that no one was wearing the glove. That means I was the only one clever enough to come up with the idea, which also means that I probably have a few more clever ideas were that came from.
Alternate Ending: This was originally conceived as a piece about an alternative to Twitter, but I thought of a quick joke about a failed attempt to sell Michael Jackson gloves. One thing led to another and the whole story ended up being about the glove, so in essence the story ended up with an alternate ending rather than one about my Twitter-like site. Also instead of the brief post I planned to write, I wrote in excess of 1500 words including the alternate ending notes. Sadly this does not include my sincere notes of apology concerning the use of Michael Jackson and Billy Mays in my hypothetical get rich quick scheme, which failed to make the final cut of this post. I apologize for their omission, but really the post was getting far too long and it was either cut the apologies or cut the anecdote about the girl from college with the muffin top.
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