Let me ask you a question and I want an honest answer. Don’t hold back. Do I look like an idiot? Do I have the word “sucker” written on my forehead and is it visible to everyone but me? Here’s the reason I ask.
As you may or may not know 4-H and FFA kids will do almost anything to get a buyer at the fair for their project animals. And apparently, some rare juvenile delinquents are not above running a con.
I was walking past the lamb pens at our local county fair during sucker season when I noticed a sad beast with pleading soulful eyes and a watery nose. I am not referring to a lamb but the kid in the straw with it. The nine year old boy, whom I knew, was hugging the lamb as tightly as he could.
“Is that you Billy? That’s a good looking little lamb you have there.”
“Oh, thank you Mr. Pitts. I’ve raised her since her mother abandoned her at birth. I call her Ali Baa Baa and she’s such a nice lamb I sure wouldn’t want to sell her and be responsible for her death. You wouldn’t buy Ali would you? She could run and play with the rest of your sheep and maybe she’d have good babies for you?”
One look at Ali Baa Baa convinced me that she was not breeding ewe material. (Southdown sheep haven’t been in fashion since Truman was President.) But I could not get that sorrowful sight out of my head. Every time I went through the lamb barn at our fair there was Billy clutching his lamb and crying his eyes out.
I’m a real softy so when the day of the Junior Livestock Auction came I was sitting in the front row. Little Billy led Ali Baa Baa into the sale ring and the bidding started at a buck a pound. But evidently I was not the only one who felt sorry for the pitiful kid and his lamb because the bidding quickly rose to five dollars. I didn’t understand why this lamb would be worth so much more than the rest, her Southdown breeding and all, but every time I thought about not bidding another crocodile tear would roll down Billy’s face.
I was eight hundred dollars poorer but the warm feeling in my heart was compensation enough. But that warm feeling quickly defrosted. Ali Baa Baa turned out to be one disgusting creature. She balled all night and was always underfoot, trying to suck your knee cap. And the warm glow I had experienced turned out to be caused by a stab to the heart.
When I attended the buyer appreciation dinner Billy and his father were unaware that I was in a rest room stall when they came in to wash up.
“Boy, we sure nailed Pitts didn’t we?” chuckled Billy’s father.
“Yeah, we pulled his leg of lamb! Ha, ha, ha,” said Billy. “Every time I saw old Pittsy coming by my pen I would jump in with Ali, hug her and look as sad as if you had cut off my allowance. I almost felt sorry for him.”
“I know what you mean,” said Billy’s father. “I could barely keep from laughing myself. And I don’t think he ever caught on that it was me bidding him up. That was real smart Billy, putting that tack in your shoe while you were in the sale ring. Those tears of pain looked like genuine tears of sorrow. I’m real proud of you son.”
The two con artists were laughing at my expense as they left the latrine.
Later that night they put on their sorrowful expressions and came over to personally thank me for buying Ali Baa Baa. “We sure do want to thank you for giving Ali a good home,” said the father. “I don’t know if little Billy could have stood the thought of having poor Ali killed.”
Then Little Billy got a real concerned look on his face that I think was genuine and asked, “By the way, how is Ali?”
I took one look at the two disgusting creatures in front of me and replied… “Deeeelicious!”
Who says revenge doesn’t taste sweet?
