When I was a kid I remember my mom answering a knock on the front door and hear some guy say hello and then try to tell my mom about something being free and my mom saying, “No thank you” and closing the door on the guy. I remember looking at my mom and saying, “Oh, mom, how could you do that? That was rude. He said it was free!” My mom looked at me and said, ”I’m too busy for that nonsense and nothing’s free, Phil.”
“But he said it was free.” I repeated to my mom, thinking that it was rude and we missed out on something free.
“He’s a salesman and he wants to sell me something. He’s not knocking on doors to give something away for free.”
“Well, shouldn’t you at least hear what he had to say?”
“I don’t want to waste my time or his time.”
I guess I was confused but years later after answering many knocks at the front door and hearing somebody say, “Let me show you this, it’s free” and patiently listening to what they had to say and only after hearing a long winded sales job, saying, “No thank you” and wasting my time and the salesperson’s time, I realized that my mom knew a whole lot more than I did about answering doors and wasting time.
I remember a guy knocking on my front door here in Chico and saying he wanted to do a “free carpet renovation” and me saying, “Okay” and the guy came in the house and spent 45 minutes vacuuming and cleaning the carpet and then saying I could buy the Hoover Renovation Machine for only $1500.00 and me remembering what my mom said years ago and me having a hard time getting the guy out of the house with his big heavy Hoover renovation Machine.
I’m wondering if the word “free” has become obsolete. I mean why do we use the word if nothing’s free anymore?
