I used to work as a yard hostler, still do sometimes, endlessly backing hundreds of semi trailers into warehouse doors. I actually enjoy it. You get good at backing up real quick. The little truck we use is called a “spottin’ rig”. Other places they’re called “yard goats”. In Seattle they’re called “can hoppers” when you’re near the port. In Canada they’re called “switch trucks”. All the same thing. My favorite part of the job though, was hearing my co-worker Steve talk about his girlfriend.

Steve met himself a 26 year old Italian beauty, she was employed with the UN, assigned to Africa, digging wells for villagers to get clean water. He met her on the internet, somehow. He was a dumpy 50 year old trucker, stupid American with too much money. Good Christian man.

“She” was probably just a series of photos, completely unaware that her likeness was being used to separate fools from their cash. Ol’ Steve sent her more than a hundred grand in total, sold his house and all his tools, they kept on stringing him right along. Everyone but me told him she was a fake, she was a scam, quit sending money, hell, one nice lady at our company even went so far as to get ahold of someone at the UN, and had documents to prove there’s no Italian beauty by that name working for the UN....I was the only one left he could talk with about it.....

Hearing him tell it was so exciting and funny and tragic, she was his life. He was IN LOVE. She was always going to be flying here next week....

He would have the whole romantic weekend planned, expensive hotel at the coast, rose petals scattered on the bed and chocolates placed on the pillows(50$ extra for that), he was going to ask her to marry him.....and of course, at the last second, something would always come up, some reason why she couldn’t show. Every few weeks, he’d get himself all worked up for the big romantic weekend, and, always it was cancelled. She needed money for the vaϲϲinations to enter the US, or customs fees, or emergency surgery, but the gold from her father’s mine would make them both rich beyond their wildest dreams. (She was going to smuggle twenty million bucks worth of bullion in her carry on luggage, her father was an evil man, forever determined to keep them apart....)

He told me that he loved her more than he’d ever loved anyone. He was going to move to Africa with her and they would make the world a better place, one well at a time. They were soulmates!

Never mind the woman he’d been married to for the last 25 years, or his own children and grandchildren, they didn’t understand TRUE LOVE.

These African scammers were artists, they knew what buttons to push, they understood subtlety, human motivations, and once those hooks were in, they damn sure wouldn’t let him get away.

He ended up hopping a plane to Lagos in desperation. I didn’t think he’d ever make it back alive, but rumor has it he’s in Arizona these days. I have no sympathy for the fool.....

Don’t ever try to smarten up a dummy. It will only make them resent you.

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The Awakening of a Paleface Ethnocist