Buck!
When I was in high school, my best friend Nathan and I used to swipe stuff out of our father’s garages and take it to Park ‘N’ Swap to sell on Saturdays. One Saturday we had sold a lot of stuff and we were getting itchy to leave. We began yelling at passersby, trying to get them to buy our remaining junk. One thing left was a soldering iron. An old, old Asian man (with a long braided ponytail – the whole works!) came up to examine it. He looked at it for a long time, then asked “How much?” Nathan said, “Well, I don’t know. It’s not that old, and it works real well and everything. How about five dollars?” The old man stared into Nathan’s eyes, and said, in a low, clipped manner: “Buck!” That made both of us laugh.
Nathan: “Ok, ok. Four bucks.”
Old Man: “Buck!”
Nathan: “Three.”
Old Man: “Buck!”
Nathan: “Two.”
Old Man: “Buck!”
Nathan: “A dollar fifty.”
Old Man: “Buck!”
Nathan: “A dollar and a quarter.”
Old Man: “Buck!”
Nathan: “Ninety-five cents, then!”
The Old Man put down the soldering iron and walked away. After that, whenever we haggled about money, one of us was sure to say, “buck!”
– Doc (August 8, 1998)
Tags: exclamation | money | one word