The Pirates of Craigslist

But ships are but boards, sailors but men: there be land-rats and water-rats, land-thieves, and water-thieves,—I mean pirates—Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, Act I, Sc. III

We’ve been trying to sell our old dining room set on craigslist. So far, I’ve been contacted by more marine engineers than I knew existed on the face of the earth. Eva, Kimberly, Sean, Lisa and Jim are all stuck at sea, with limited access to the internet. Despite their limited access, they’ve managed to squeeze out precious minutes to comb craigslist for an expensive dining room set. And by some miraculous coincidence, each and every one of them wants to surprise a son, father, brother or some other member of the family whose life will be made complete by the surprise delivery of a mahogany-crotch veneered dining table the size of a Volkswagen minibus.

Eva, Kimberly, Sean, Lisa and Jim may have limited access to their bank account, but they seem to enjoy an easy and limitless relationship with PayPal.  And they also have transport agents available at a moment's notice. (I don’t have a transport agent in my contact list or rolodex. Do you?)

Here’s an example of their introductory spiel:

Thanks for the prompt response.. I am ready to buy it now but i am not in town at the moment as i am a marine engineer manager and due to the nature of my work, It hard to make a phone calls and visiting of website are restricted but i squeezed out time to check this advert and send you an email regarding it. I really want it to be a surprise for my dad so i wont let him know anything about it until it gets delivered to him, i am sure he will be more than happy with it. I insisted on PayPal because i don't have access to my bank account online as i don't have internet banking, but i can pay from my PayPal account, as i have my bank a/c attached to it, i will need you to give me your PayPal email address and the price so i can make the payment asap for it and please if you don't have PayPal account yet, it is very easy to set up, go to http://www.paypal.com/ and get it set up, after you have set it up i will only need the e-mail address you use for registration with PayPal so as to put the money through. I will make a solid pick up arrangement with my transport agent after i have made the payment...

I thought the first message was odd, and I responded with the suggestion that the intrepid engineer drop by to inspect the furniture once he was back on shore. Cash and Carry only. And don’t you want to take a closer look at what you’re buying before you plunk down $4000? And once variations on the same message began to arrive in bulk, I knew there couldn't be that many ships at sea.... I also couldn't resist answering. And once the email exchange began in earnest, things fell apart. Lisa, Kim, Sean, Eva and Jim have limited English vocabularies. If the original message looks a little hinky, once my pen pals were forced to improvise, the narrative crumbled into something bordering on gibberish. I began to take perverse pleasure in watching them tie themselves into linguistic knots, and finally concluded there was nothing more coming from craigslist than the pleasure of pulling the wings off flies.

So what have we learned from this latest rich life experience?  

1.     Marine engineering does not suffer from gender bias. From my scientific sampling, fully 60% of the profession is made up of women.
2.     My life is lacking a solid relationship with a transport agent. These people are at sea, but seem to have moving companies at their beck and call at all times. Why is this luxury missing from my own life?
3.     What lonely lives marine engineers have! Every one of these missives was sent in the middle of the night. They’ve been reduced to trolling craigslist at 1 AM for dining room sets for the loved ones they miss so desperately.
4.     Surely these folks are related to that African diplomat with the million dollar bank balance who wanted only the opportunity to transfer his balance into my checking account.
5.   There be pirates out there......