Do they even call them 'stereos' anymore? Or am I dating myself, yet again?! Anyway, the year was 1977. I was living with D at the time. We had gone to Radio Shack to look at a stereo. We found one we liked, but at the moment, we were just lookin' around. When we got home, he called his brother, who lived in M-town - about an hour down the road from us. He was telling him about the stereo we were looking at. His brother was dumbfounded because he had also just gotten back from Radio Shack and had been looking at exactly the same stereo! Doo doo doo doo, doo doo doo doo…..(think theme song from ….dang it, what was that show?.....oh yea….The Twilight Zone!) Wow....wasn't that just weird, both at RS on the same day, looking at the same stereo and neither of them knowing the other was even THINKING about a stereo. But that's not the end of the story.

About two weeks later, we went to RS to buy the stereo. (Funny side story...this was the butt of a joke between D & I for a very long time....he borrowed the money from me to buy his stereo.....then said he married me a few months later because he didn't want to have to pay back the money. Still not sure which of us got screwed worse in that deal!! LOL) Anyway, back to the story.....we bought the stereo, got back to our apartment and started setting it all up. Lo and behold, there were no speaker wires. Of course this was back in the day before everything came 'wireless'...so wires were a MUST. We looked all over, inside every box...no speaker wires to be found. So I volunteered to drive back to RS to pick up the wires. Now, mind you, the particular RS we bought the stereo from was clear across town.....and there was no good, fast way to get there....at least a 30 minute drive, maybe more like 45 minutes, one way.
I'll tell you the ironic part of the story, then go back to me getting the speaker wires.....
Ironic - while I was on my way to get the speaker wires, D called his brother to tell him we had decided to buy the stereo. But his brother wasn't home....his roommate said he was at RS buying a stereo......turns out his brother bought that same stereo on the same day. It was so weird. And there hadn't been any communication regarding the stereos between the two of them, aside from the call the day we had looked at them. Guess we thought it was true...."Great minds think alike" (only people never go on with the rest of the saying.....which is "And fools seldom differ.") Okay, okay, back to speaker wires.

I get over to RS and tell them that they forgot to give me the speaker wires with the stereo. The salesman looked at me and said "Oh no, we didn't forget them. You have to buy them separately. They don't come with the system." I couldn't believe my ears. "You mean I buy a stereo and it doesn't come with SPEAKER WIRES???" No, he said, I'd have to buy them. I stood there for a few minutes, kinda shaking my head....then looked at him and said "So do you go buy a pair of tennis shoes and have to buy the shoelaces separately? No, they come with laces already in them. They are a necessary part of the shoes. Well a stereo should come with speaker wires, else how are you going to use the stereo?" The guy said "Sorry, that's just how it is. You'll have to buy the speaker wires yourself." I looked at him and said "Well, I don't think so. You will GIVE me the speaker wires, or I will drive back across town, pack up your stinkin' stereo and bring it back....and you'll give me back every penny I paid you and I WILL go somewhere else to buy a stereo....to a place that really wants my business!" He stuttered and stammered around and then handed me a package of speaker wires. I walked rather smugly out to my car, with speaker wires in hand, and no money out of my pocket!
Further irony in this story....when D's brother finally called him back, they talked about the stereos for a bit and it turns out that his brother had the same problem we had had.....no speaker wires. Only his brother had gone back to get them, been told the same thing I was told and he PAID for the speaker wires!!

I was so proud of that line about tennis shoes with no laces...that I have used it a few times since. One time was when we bought a brand new washer and dryer. They came to deliver and set them up, then told me I’d have to pay $14.95 for the flexible gas hose to hook up the dryer. I’m not talking about the dryer vent hose….I mean the metal flex hose that pipes the gas to the dryer. I used that same line…about the tennis shoes without laces, and said if they weren’t going to throw in a stupid fourteen dollar and ninety five cent hose, then they could just haul those appliances back up out of the basement, put them back on their truck and take them back to their warehouse…..I was NOT paying for the hose that is required to run a gas dryer. Bottom line….they threw in the hose for nothing!

You know, it wasn’t about the money, it is just that ‘they’ will try to get you for every penny they can think of. And I am not going to get taken like that. If they want my business, they will do what is necessary to make me happy. I don’t feel they were unreasonable requests…..not like I was asking them give me a thousand dollar stereo for free when I bought speaker wires. I was asking for five dollar speaker wires for free when I’d just spent over a thousand dollars on a stereo. It was the principle of the thing. And I won’t buy tennis shoes without laces………