Every Day I'm Hustlin

Random memory # 245-c

They used to call me Hustleman back in high school. I tried to make a profit on everything. I always sold fundraiser candy for twice the price. I figured they weren't getting free labor outta me. The school store was shut down by the board of education, so they dumped all the inventory. I went and got a janitor's trashcan on wheels and rolled as much of it as I could grab back to my locker. Sold it. I was the only student to volunteer to come back and clean the lockers over the summer. The principal let me have whatever I found. I'd sell people their clothes and stuff back the next year. I had a stash of TI-83 calculators that I was selling for $40 to freshmen. I just had this entrepreneurial spirit.

We'd have pizza parties in homeroom and I'd never chip in. It seemed stupid to put in five bucks for two slices of pizza and a little styrofoam cup of soda. I'd go to the payphone and call in my own order using a "buy one, get one free" coupon. $13 bucks got me two pizzas. I'd eat half of one pizza and sell the remaining slices of that pizza to the people who were still hungry in my homeroom for a dollar a slice. Then I'd turn around and take that second pizza around to the other homerooms that didn't have a pizza party and sell the slices for two bucks. If you do the math...I actually made money:
Pizza #1 had 4 slices left. Each slice sold for $1.... $4 total.
Pizza #2 had 8 slices. Each slice sold for $2....$16 total.
$16 +$4=$20
After you take out the $13 I paid initially, I made $7 on the pizza party.

I think I'll live in infamy for my "School Trip Catering Service." We'd go on these four-day ski trips and college tours. I could barely afford to go on the trip, let alone buy food at our destination. So I just started taking a whole lotta food to eat on over the four days. I had a 22 piece from Popeyes, cereal, snack foods, sandwiches, a frozen gallon of juice and a gallon of water. I started selling the food and before you knew it, it was my thing. I'd show up to the bus with two duffel bags of food. Everyone else had maybe a sandwich or a bag of chips, nobody was thinking that far ahead. As night crept up and stomachs started rumbling..."Hey Ordale, you got any of that chicken left?" (Yep...$4) Four bucks got you a piece of chicken, some chips, a little cup of juice and Little Debbie brownie. I even had Alka-Seltzer and Tylenol. One year I made about $100...profit.

I sell ice in the winter
I sell fire in hell
I am a hustler baby
I'll sell water to a well