Do You Want to Buy Some Oysters?

"Do you want to buy some oysters?"


When someone approaches you to speak, you can never be totally sure what they are going to say. You might think you have an idea about what they are going to say, but sometimes the words that come out of their mouths are a total surprise.

I was at work the other night when a truck driver approached me. (I work in the truck yard of a large manufacturing/warehouse facility.) Usually when truck drivers approach me like this, they ask me where the office is. (The door to the office is not marked very well.)

So, I was more than a bit taken aback when the first thing he said to me was, "Do you want to buy some oysters?"

My initial reaction was, "Wha?" (Not "What?" but "Wha?" There is a slight difference.)

Seeing my confusion at his question, the truck driver clarified things for me. "I've got twenty pounds of oysters that they wouldn't accept at my last stop, so I'm trying to sell them to get rid of them."

"Oh. So they're rejected oysters! Well, in that case I'd love to buy them!!!" is something I certainly did not say. What I actually did say was, "Umm, no thanks."

Do you want to buy some oysters?

So, I sent the truck driver up to the office to check in. The load he was actually delivering was chicken broth. (I'm not sure why chicken broth and oysters were on the same trailer, but I gave up trying to understand things a long time ago.) Apparently, he asked several other people the same question, "Do you want to buy some oysters?" As far as I could tell, no one actually did, and he left the yard with all twenty pounds of his oysters unsold.

I asked the guard at the truck gate about it, and he said, "If it hadn't been twenty pounds, I probably would have bought them. I like oysters, but I wouldn't want that many."

So let me get this straight, it wasn't the quality of the oysters that kept him from buying them, it was the quantity! Really???

Let's go over what we know about the quality of these oysters:
1. They were rejected at the driver's last stop.
2. There are any number of reasons why the oysters might have been rejected.
C. Most of those reasons are bad.
4. Oysters come from the sea.
5. We are in the middle of Utah!!!
6. Utah is very far from any ocean! (Yes, the Great Salt Lake and Utah Lake are fairly large bodies of water, but neither is known for producing oysters!) (Or anything else edible for that matter.)
7. They were being sold by a truck driver out of the back of his truck.
8. Again, this is a parking lot in the middle of Utah, not Pike's Place Market!

So, really, the thing that kept the guard from buying these scary oysters was that there were too many of them?!?

There are no oceans or seas bordering Utah. It is not known for its seafood.

(Of course, we are in the middle of the Rocky Mountains. Maybe they were rocky mountain oysters? That might have made more sense, but it wouldn't have changed my answer. I am not going to buy bull testicles from some guy out of the back of his truck, either.)

That should have been the end of the questionable oysters, but it wasn't. Why not? Because I have a six-year-old daughter. Why would that matter? Well, because I have a six-year-old daughter, I have listened to the soundtrack of the movie Frozen approximately 492 493 times. And, because I have listened to the soundtrack of the movie Frozen approximately 493 494 times, I spent the whole evening singing "Do you want to buy some oysters?" to the tune of "Do You Want to Build a Snowman?"

Come on, sing it along with me! "Do you want to buy some oysters?"

In fact, the "Do You Want to Buy-Some-Oysters/Build-a-Snowman" song was so ingrained in my brain that the only way I could get it out was by watching the video for "Baby Monkey Riding On a Pig." (Watch the video twice and you will be singing "Baby Monkey" for the rest of your life.)

Why do I tell you this story? So that if someone comes up to you and asks "Do you want to buy some oysters," you will JUST SAY NO!!! (And if you have "Do You Want To Buy Some Oysters?" or "Baby Monkey Riding On a Pig" stuck in your brain, well, it's better than having to get your stomach pumped.)



[Special thanks to my lovely wife, Amber. My phone call with her about the questionable oysters served as the basis of this post. And to my friend Andy for infecting my brain with the "Baby Monkey" song.]