I bought these two precious items yesterday. They were handcrafted and sold to me by a group of three little girls in my street aged about 4-5 years accompanied by even younger siblings about two years old. The items are best described as stuffed paper pillows with original artwork on the cover and encased in cello-tape. They are a sort of squishy, crumpled and compressible. Having been repeatedly crumpled and squished they regain their shape after a bit of punishment. The smaller one fits inside the palm of my hand. I paid $2 for the smaller one and 50 cents for the larger one.
The sales technique was absolutely irresistible - a bunch of them showed up at my door step, a street cat with them, did not even knock on the door. I heard some noise for a while at my front door and as soon as I opened it, one of them looked up, said Hello, and showed me a cloth bag that could be slung on the shoulder of an adult and used to shop for a few items. Of course, the shoulder sling was taller than the kids and they held the bag closed and one said, I needed to close my eyes and dip a hand in the bag and pull out a surprise, and it would be an item that I could buy for 1 dollar or 2 dollars. "May be 3 dollars," added another. The cat tried to force its way into my house, then a 2 year old grabbed it and pulled it away.
I asked them to wait, went inside to look for some change, found a dollar and came out.
I put my hand in the bag and pulled out the smaller item that said "Buy Me Please!" - there were three quotes shouted out " 2 dollars", "1 dollar" and then "or 3 dollars" from three different kids. They then decided to sell it to me for 1 dollar, but I said, I would go back inside and look for more money. I came back with 2 dollars and paid the middle quote. They showed me another similar crumpled paper pillow that they said was for 1 dollar.
One of them demonstrated how I could repeatedly squish my purchase - sort of like with stress-relief foam balls that computer programmers sometimes use. "Or you can do anything you want with it" suggested another.
I went back inside and they all went away. In about a couple minutes, I heard a knock at my door. This time they had the big item ready and held it up to me.
"This is free for you," said one of them and was nudged by another,"Really you can have it for 50 cents" she continued.
I went inside, found a 50 cent coin and bought the second bigger item... Just could not resist impulse buying.
Copyright (c) Kannan Narayanamurthy 2020
All rights reserved.
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