While we attempted to find a suit which fit me -- a tougher challenge than you might think -- my father called Toyota to explain that while he quite liked the car, his wife was simply unwilling to make a deal without a higher appraisal for the trade-in but do please call if you think there might be room for discussion. And we went off to lunch where, unpredictably, there was a curious sideline. As we were leaving, we saw a couple of kids being chided by (we assume) their mother to come along already. One of the little kids was holding a litter one, and the litter one screamed. The marginally bigger kid quickly said, ``It's all my fault -- I squeezed too hard!''
My mother and I looked at one another disbelievingly. The kid may be young, but doesn't she or he understand the rules for this sort of thing when you do something that makes a sibling yelp in pain? First of all, you're never supposed to say ``It's all my fault'', at least not at least before you're old enough to have earned a bachelor's degree. Second, no, admitting that you were doing something which would make the sibling yelp is not the right way to play that out. The right response it to deny doing anything which would make a Reasonable Sibling unhappy at all, and by the time we reached the car we concluded the proper move would have been ``I don't know what happened, I was just hugging!'' It's very disturbing to think the youth of today don't understand the basic starting principles of interacting with siblings and parents.
Over lunch, the Toyota dealership left my father a voice-mail explaining that they were considering things and they had a second team of appraisers who might, if we were willing to come in and discuss a deal today, be able to look the car over again and perhaps find some of the couple-thousand-dollars more that my parents insisted on for the car. I realize this is utterly routine for haggling over car prices, but I really, really, really hate haggling, so it's probably for the best that I've failed to get anywhere near the point of buying a car where I might theoretically buy a car. I was uncomfortable just hearing the haggling on the outside, and that from before anyone had said anything definitive.
Trivia: On 5 April 1981 the P&O ferry Elk and cruise ship Canberra were requisitioned by the British Government for Falkland War duty. Source: The Story of P&O, David Howarth, Stephen Howarth.
Currently Reading: Venus Inc, Cyril Kornbluth, Fred Pohl. I don't think I quite followed the second book, although it was reasonably satisfying. It did feel a lot like more of the first, though.