Summer Business Story/Dried Apricots and Banana Chip Evening

When I was like 16 I launched a business. I had blacktopped my driveway with my dad and I got a big idea. I was gonna start a local business called 'Todd's Driveway Service.' I printed up some flyers saying that I'd blacktop driveways real cheap and gave out my phone number (which I shared with my brother).  Before I knew it business started pouring in. It was exciting. I was going back and forth to Pergament picking up tar and the big rollers and sticks and stirrers and was setting up a schedule or whatever. I printed up some t-shirts and considered not going to college.

Soon I found out that the gardeners in the neighborhood were upset because they did alot of the driveways. Usually for a couple hundred bucks or whatever. Meanwhile I was charging like $70 and making like $45 or whatever and taking business from them. Cool! Competition! I was a businessman! The idea of doing one driveway a day seemed easy enough and it would be plenty of cash. 

For like a week things were great! But then the business started to get to be a problem. The main problem was I started to get really tired of blacktopping driveways. All the muck and backbreaking work. I started to learn the business the hard way by doing things like giving out price quotes without actually seeing the size of the driveway first. Dumb. Taking on too much work. The summer heat. Low profits. Mad that I was being taking advantage of myself because I was only 16. Also the t-shirts were too cheap and the letters started peeling off.

The final straw was one day I was doing this woman's driveway and was reeeeallly tired of blacktopping (by the way this is like week 2 of my 'business'). I was in a bad mood and I got wild with the roller and completely splattered this woman's garage door with tar. I panicked and got out my rag and tried to wipe the tar off but it just smeared it all around. I didn't know what to do. I never splattered a garage door before.  So I just sort of ignored it and finished blacktopping. When the lady came out to check on me she came out by opening the garage and never saw the splatter. Out of sight out of mind. I took her money and never told her what I did to her garage door. I sort of felt guilty or whatever but what was I supposed to do? I justified it by thinking she got a really good deal on the driveway so it like balanced out -or some bad logic like that

Anyway the next day I screened out a call from the lady about the garage door. She was mad at me and wanted me to paint her whole garage door. Uch! From that point on I screened all calls in case it was her. I didn't want to paint her garage door. I was sick of the driveway business! My back hurt too! So I decided to go out of business. Done and done. 

Years later when I was working in a local bookstore she came in to buy some books and told me I looked familiar to her. She asked how she knew me. I knew it was the garage door lady but I told her I didn't know who she was. She stared at me like suspicious but it didn't click. Phew. So that was that.

Oh anyway about the dried apricots and banana chips.... tonite and have been eating them like crazy and wowee wow have I been farting my head off... jeez louise something fierce! I can't stand to be in the room with myself! Horrible. Gotta be more careful with them in the future.

That's pretty much that with that too.

ok bye!

tOdd