There, I said it.
So now I’m just going to up and tell you about the time my mother was offered a quarter of a million for me.
Shoot. There goes the punchline.
So…previously on the ol’ raincoaster blog…my mother used to live in Riyadh with a CIA agent. Her job was at the King Fahd Hospital (I think every Saudi city has a King Fahd Hospital) in medical records, and, as one does, she had pictures of her children on and around her desk.
The Saudis, being relatively new to the modern world, had imported vast numbers of support and technical staff from the West, yea even unto Canuckistan, and occasionally ther would be slight episodes of culture shock in one or more directions.
This was one of those times.
The Saudis, being relatively new to the modern world but nobody’s fools, their Gucci tabs notwithstanding, had sent entire generations of young men to be trained in the West, choosing top of the totem pole jobs like doctor, dentist, etc. You won’t find many Saudis abroad studying to be lab technicians: that’s what Americans are for, duh. Support staff is imported, bosses are homegrown but schooled abroad.
And one of these Saudi doctors was in my mother’s office, no doubt complaining, as they all did, that the medical transcriptionist (who hailed from, if memory serves, Tennessee and had, consequently, great difficulties with English) had mistaken his Oxonian vowels, not to mention his Etonian (or at least Harrovian) consonants, and typed that the pregnant woman was dilated to “twenty-five hundred meters” rather than the “twenty-five sontemeters that he’d actually said.
And his glance happened to fall on a portrait of yours truly. And it is a fact universally acknowledged that a young Saudi doctor possessed of a secure job at the King Fahd Hospital must be in want of wife #1.
So he made an offer.
A quarter mil.
I should be honoured: Brooke Shields‘ mother was only offered forty racing camels. I did the exchange at the time and figured out I was worth about fifteen thou more than she was. Obviously the economies of Riyadh and Milan operate on completely different principles, if not planets.
Mother was nobody’s fool, and also possessed of the same demented and twisted DNA as I, myself: the family anything-for-a-story trait surfaced and she decided to bicker with him.
Fifteen minutes passed and she got the price up by forty k and a couple of pedigreed camels, but he wouldn’t go to three hundred thou, for very good reason.
As he pointed out, there’s got to be something wrong with a girl who’s 23 and not married yet. Smart cookie: it took my boyfriend of the time simply months to figure that out.
Yes, I was marked down because I was past my Best Before date.
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raincoaster 
I love that mom got the price up. That is hilarious to me.
That is SO like my mother. But I’d love to know if the camels were her idea or his.
FYI this piece was ruthlessly fact-checked on the basic assumption that if I’d included any made-up shit my sister would manifest in the comments section and Fisk me. So every word is true.
Wow first wife gets to boss all the other wives around right? Also he was a doctor that is very respectable. It is too bad he was so stingy with camels.
Actually, I’m a sucker for a nice pedigreed Arabian horse; Mother was holding out on him. A couple of nice greys and a house in the South of France and we could have come to a deal.
In fairness to her, she DID pass the offer along in case I was interested.
Harsh that 23 was the best before date. A Korean Canadian ex of mine was told 25 by a family friend back in the ’90s.
This was just a few years before. After 25, no way would anyone be eligible to be a first wife; you’re seriously just leftovers at that point. He told my mother that if I were 18 like he’d thought I was, he’d have gone to half a million. It’s the blonde.
You have no “best before” date. You’re a million dollar babe that’s always fresh and funny.
And such a good writer I think you’ll find a way to take your blog to the course to promote the U.S. Women’s Open next week in a way that no one in the history of bloggy promotions has ever thought of. And you won’t even dangle any participles while it you’re at.
Golf?
Golf?
GOLF?
I’ve known of this perversion of yours, but because I respect you for other reasons I’ve seen fit to overlook it. Who was it who said “if there were really truth in advertising, golf on tv would be called ‘pretty, green, slow-moving wallpaper’?”
TT, thank you. But there is no market in Saudi for fresh, funny babes, never has been. Eteraz may correct me if he likes, but I don’t think he’s been to Riyadh.
See, you’re getting in the spirit of the thing already!
Riiiight. I may consider it, as long as I can make fun of the way they dress.
Good God, how did convo about being sold to a young wealthy Islamic as a first wife turn into golf chat?
That is so wrong.
The Marchioness of WitchH under B etc
Your Ladyship
The Constructivist takes a surprisingly complacent view of your Ladyship’s participles
Schockingly reminiscent of Mr Blair’s staying well beyond his best retirement-by date (but think of the enhanced Pension)
But what about your Ladyship’s Gerunds and gerundives ???!!!???
and don’t Etonians pronounce the c-word as Sentimes !!!
Yr Ladyship’s obedt servt etc
G E
You’d rather have Broon? Dear god, man, what have you been drinking?
As for my gerunds and others Of That Ilk, I’ve had no complaints, thankyouverymuch.
re:centimes…how would I know? The only Englishman I ever talk to went to University College School.
See, max: golf is perverse.
Wasn’t Lovecraft a 3 handicap?
I’m not sure. The tentacles were probably ruled out of bounds.
My question is, if you had a best before date on you, was there a missing person ad on the back?
Honey, if I found you in the discount bin at dollar days I’d pick you up; assuming I had a coupon and they were giving double airmiles. I mean, there’s no reason not to make sensible consumer decisions.
@FFE:
They don’t do that here. We know runaways in Canada save their money for green vegetables and their byproducts.
But I’ve always wanted to get a sticker with my face on it, and then stick it to all the cartons in a Von’s or similar. Then I’d go stand next to the checkout line and watch the clerks doing doubletakes.
Metro, if you’ll recall, that’s more or less how we met.
I have to side with Metro on this one, more or less. Why settle for youth and inexperience when one can be needled mercilessly yet with keen intellect and usually flawless reasoning until (and sometimes beyond) the grave?
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Hmmmm – the more I think of it – the thought of raincoaster in a burka – – –
Perhaps I won’t think of that. I like being able to walk away from things!
Herr AerChie
Schocking – no wonder there’s so much consumption of SchNapps in your Place … and I thought this had been caused by too much (ab)Use of Mr Howard …. no wonder the Elephant’s turning Pink …
It’s not my drinking, after all
Schocking
G E
The habaya hides the tentacles quite nicely, actually. Well, you can see the tip of one peeking out on the right there, but otherwise quite good.
I don’t recall exactly how we met. It took quite a lot of therapy to acheive and I was happy with the results. Why must you have answers? Aren’t questions beautiful enough?
No.
“Achieve”.
Tentacles in the supermarket – the new horror! Someone alert Homeland Insecurity!
If there are no tentacles in your supermarket, you must not live in Chinatown.
I thought to myself, I thought: “Surely she will not tax me with the mis-spelling of one simple word. That would be rather common, cheap and mean.”
I know, I know … what was I drinking ? … I mean thinking.
Exactly. See also your two other comments here lately.
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