A Christmas Story that Starts at The South Pole

I'm gonna take you way back to Christmas 2002. The wars were just beginning. The internet busters were still high tailin' it out of here and the hero's wives were buying their first mansions out on the Sound. It was tough for some, tougher for others, I fell into the latter category and Christmas was approaching fast.
I love to say how much I don't like the commercialization of Christmas. To an extent it's true. The debt people accept, the large ticket items people get children who really don't need to be brought up that way, etc.

But, the truth is, I like getting things for folks. So being that my wallet was as light as it's ever been that year, things weren't looking good for my kith and kin come the 25th. That sucked. I was sucking up unemployment after the collapse of my industry on Sept. 12 of the previous year. I was trying to make anything work. One thing was that was working was 'The Pig'.

'The Pig' is better known as ebay. Though, "The Pig" is more apt. It's where we dump our crap to feed our crap-eating animals. Or, some sort of metaphor like that.

I was buying and selling on ebay to make ends meet. It wasn't easy. I had little capital and even less credit to work with and had to work hard to make a small profit. These were tough times. Rent was due just a few short days after Christmas when I was making my Sunnyside Rounds.

The Sunnyside Rounds included only three places, two thrift stores - one on the boulevard and one on Greenpoint; and the South Pole. The South Pole is a surplus store of the non-dollar variety. Everything is inexpensive, most of it's cheap, and some of it is priced far, far, far below open-market value.

I was wandering around, at the end of my rounds, when I spotted the pyramid that would pay for it all. If you're reading this, you remember 'My So-Called Life', a television series starring Claire Danes. It was pretty popular, and it had been canceled and then packaged as a DVD series. And, on the shelf at the register at the South Pole was a stack of twelve of them. I quickly went to the bank, emptied out my account, sure that someone was going to beat me to it.

I bought them all at 10.00 each and sold them for just over 60.00 - the lowest 'Buy It Now' price then seen on ebay for a NIB product. When I sold them all, I drove out to the South Pole in Jamaica and bought 15 more - this time negotiating a discount for the tax, as I was not so much in a hurry. NO one in Queens, especially not in Jamaica, is going to stop to think about the value of reselling a canceled series about the ennui-inducing life of a white, middle-class girl from the 'burbs. I had no competition.

I sold the units at will for days, netted close to a grand and gave two units away as gifts. One to Claire Deveron, in fact. Paid my half of the rent and still had some dough for a night out.

Merry Christmas from The South Pole. Check it out. You never know what you will find there that might make you rich.