A couple days ago I had a passing fancy with regard to my oh-so-special animal cracker. I didn’t have anything better to do with my time – what with the electricians busily rewiring our house and the power going off willy-nilly. No cooking, no TV, no computer. nada. My mind was sort of drifting as I sat staring at the wall, and then suddenly I thought of my funny cracker. So I pulled it out to take a gander, and pretty soon I found myself going hog wild. No I WAS NOT EATING IT nor was I inspired to do anything unseemly. I was taking photos! All sorts of wacky photos of my cracker couple! And laughing at the hilarity of it all and enjoying myself heartily. So after that was all over, I thought hmmm.. perhaps I should try selling my cracker on eBay again? After all, we sure could use the money (not that I expected anyone to cough up $3600 for my cracker – but STILL….) So I thought, what the heck. I’ll try it again.
Unfortunately, eBay was not very helpful. at all. For some reason, every time I tried listing the cracker, it came back as violating their “Mature Audiences Prohibitions”. These are things like the sale of bodily fluids, XXX materials and so on. It got me thinking. I KNOW people must be selling crazy sex crap on eBay (NOT THAT I REALLY KNOW, I AM JUST GUESSING HERE), but how do these sorts of people market their soiled underpants, or their dildos, or whatnot? They must be selling their wares somehow, but HOW?? HOW???!! It wasn’t like I was trying to slip anything truly vulgar or upsetting past eBay. I am a mother. I am a decent, upstanding citizen. This cracker isn’t more than my kids see routinely on National Geographic. SO WHY WAS MY COOKIE SETTING OFF NASTY-GUARD ALARMS??? After many attempts, I came to realize that the only way I could get my cracker up on eBay was to list it with the rest of the back-of-the-van over-18 stuff. And so I did. I was not happy to have to do it that way. But I was glad that I’d finally managed to do it. Somehow I felt VINDICATED.
Of course, the feeling of triumph didn’t last long. After mulling it over all evening, and then sleeping on it, in the morning I have to say I felt a little bit… dirty. My poor cookies. How could I do that to them? How could I stock them on the same auction shelves as porn? They are not porn!! I felt bad. Not as bad as someone selling their soiled undies might (or perhaps should), but still I felt a little dirty. My cookies are not lewd. They should not to be classed under “adult bookstore”. And so I took my auction down. eBay’s rules are just not for me. They are like those parental control measures that don’t let you look up breasts when you have cancer b/c little boys are googling boobies for the fun of it. Annoying and obviously misguided. SO I decided to share this with you all, so you would understand and feel my pain too.
