So this is not strictly a North Beach story, but most of it takes place on this favored land, so I’m going to tell it here.

A while back, I violated a rule I made for myself at least a couple of years ago, to wit:

Do not ever, under any circumstances, buy anything from an ad on Facebook or Instagram or any of the other unregulated internet places. I had come by this rule honestly, by getting scammed too many times. The first time it happened, I ordered a set of gemstone earrings and a bizarre comb (I think??) arrived in the mail. Not safe to use near any living head of hair. The tines were big and heavy enough to use to turn a brisket slab on the barbie but with a handle that wouldn’t stand up to the heat. Totally worthless on any planet.

A damn scam! Shoulda known better!

After enough months had gone by for my memory to lapse, I ordered some kind of stained glass thing I thought would look perfect in this one window. When it got here, it was a tiny piece of crappy plastic that had the most pitiful looking pretend flower-like faint smears that had nothing in common whatsoever with the photo of the ordered item. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. And now, as a neighbor from my childhood used to start each sentence, “Goddammittohell. Won’t get fooled again, that’s for sure.”

I am the perfect target for these thieves. Because after I swear at them and myself in disgust, I set the overpromised and underdelivered item on the mail table because I have every intention of returning the crap and getting my money back, but then I remember, “Well, it came from across the Pacific Ocean, I don’t even remember the name of the company, I don’t have a phone number or an email address, and better business bureau doesn’t go there and I could spend 74 hours tracking all this down, but the chances of getting a response are nil and I charge myself  $50 an hour to fix my stupid mistakes so it’s better to just cut my losses now and consider it a lesson learned and the price of repeat stupidity and NEVER DO IT AGAIN!!!” And this time I mean it, goddammittohell!!

Well, you know what they say about what the road to hell is paved with. I had every intention of NEVER BUYING ANYTHING FROM AN AD ON FACEBOOK OR INSTAGRAM OR ANY OTHER INTERNET ANYTHING FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE. 

I think a year or more had passed, which is enough time for me to even forget where I live, let alone rules to live by. And then I saw an ad for this gorgeous wool coat. From a mall in Milan. A fashion Mecca Nordstrom. Now there’s a name you can trust. And the colors! Lucious! Half price!! What a deal. Had to have!! See what I mean:

A few weeks went by when JR, our awesome UPS driver, pulled up and dropped a package on the porch. I opened it excitedly, thinking, “oh, my beautiful wool coat just came!”

I’m sure you guessed the next part. Which was actually foreshadowed in the ad above. If you’re really paying attention, you’ll notice that even though the font and the letters are exactly the same as the iconic company conceived and birthed in our fair state, it’s not actually Nordstrom. It’s Nordstorm. Like when you’re playing Wordle and you still don’t quite have all the letters in the right squares.

Outright fraud, I’d say. And the gorgeous wool coat is not wool and it doesn’t look anything like the ad. Let me count the ways: it’s a strange synthetic fabric that is lined with a different strange synthetic fabric. The colors are bright, but garish rather than gorgeous. It looks like it was sewn in home ec class as a student’s first project and initial encounter with a sewing machine. It has one button, placed at the largest part of the boob line so you get squished in the most unflattering and uncomfortable way. No matter your boob size. The pockets are placed at bottom boob half level. The lines don’t line up.

Okay, this time my embarrassment at falling for yet another scam had reached the level of actual shame. I avoided mirrors in our house for six days and hid in the bushes whenever anybody went by our yard. How could I ever live this one down? People will know just by looking at me!

But then I realized I was taking the wrong approach. This is the age of social media, where we tell everybody everything and our sins and shame are diminished and even erased in the telling. I mean have you watched you tube lately? Listened to podcasts?? Everybody reveals everything! The more embarrassing the better! Especially if nudity is involved. Bonus points if you release a sex tape and pretend to be dismayed.

So I decided to be at least privately public. We have a little needlework group that meets occasionally at a church in Moclips. Somehow I became the closest thing we have to an organizer. The group is tiny, sometimes just two or three in attendance. This time I announced there would be a door prize and we’ve never had a bigger crowd. Seven of us showed up!

Guess what the door prize was? You got it! The Nordstorm coat. I confessed my shame, and that gave everyone a chance to share their own falling for a Facebook scam story. Pretty much everyone had one!! I felt so affirmed. Not enough to ever buy anything there again, but to be able to show my face to the community. Wearing a mask of course.

Nobody stepped forward to claim the door prize. I told the others I wasn’t taking it home, so we decided to award it to the member who was late. So I texted her to tell her she won, turned out she was on her way.

We had her close her eyes and put it on. When she looked, her expression was hard to read. Like maybe she was a bit appalled but way too nice to tell us, and tried to think of something nice to say. So we told her the story, and the last thing I heard her say was she might have to pass it on to some other deserving person.

We agreed that future recipients should be local so we can keep it on the North Beach so it can become a local legend. Maybe someday in the distant future it will be donated to the Museum! So we all need to keep our eyes and ears alert to see who it pops up on next.

So I guess it really is a North Beach story after all. And in the end, this makes it worth the $69 I paid for it. So we’re good.

AND I’M NEVER BUYING ANYTHING OFF FACEBOOK OR INSTAGRAM OR ANY PLACE ONLINE WHERE THE FRAUDSTERS AND SCAMMERS SELL THEIR CRAP! AND THIS TIME I REALLY REALLY REALLY MEAN IT!!