Beanie Babies

A man buys a typewriter from a man who doesn't understand what it means.

"I'll take it."

The man, a perfectly nice but admittedly rather oblivious fellow by the name of Arnold, grinned and hauled it off the yard sale table. 

"I'll take it to your car for you," he said good-naturedly. As he placed it in the trunk he turned to the purchaser, a man much taller and thinner than him with a nose that turned up slightly, and asked, "you ever had a typewriter before?"

The man nodded curtly, "I've had four others." 

Arnold, a polite man, feigned interest. "Four! Why're you getting a new one? They break?" 

"Yes. Yes, they all broke." It was a lie. As he spoke they were all sitting, side by side and in perfect working condition, in a dark corned or his basement. 

"You write a lot?"

"Yes. Quite a lot." This was the truth. 

Arnold, still attempting to make conversation with the man who he was beginning to think was far too strange and much too tall, commented, "Maybe you just oughta use notebooks if they keep breaking on you." 

He paused, carefully calculating his response. When he finally spoke, he just said: "they fill up too quickly."

"A computer, then?" Arnold suggested. "At the rate you go through typewriters it might actually be worth the investment." He laughed. The other man did not. 

"I have a computer," he said flatly. 

"Oh ..." he decided to try one more time to make this puzzling, introspective man laugh. "It fill up to quickly, too?" He did not laugh. 

"Once you've figured out what there is to know about a computer," he explained in that same flat voice, "typing on one is easy: too easy. It's boring. Nothing more than busy work." His tone had slowly become scalding and, with the last few words, he was looking directly at Arnold. 

Arnold had just concluded that the man was, indeed, far too strange. He opened his mouth to say something, then closed it again and shook his head perplexedly. He then gave a hasty goodbye and waddled back inside without taking the money for his typewriter. 

The man, certain that he would be forgotten as soon as all the beanie babies and moth-eaten old clothes that Arnold had pawned off on neighbors were forgotten, got into his car and drove away.