THE GOATPEN

I mowed a lady's yard one summer that never seemed to have her two dollars. She would always say 'I'll pay you next week" and the next week she would say the same thing.
I also did some odd jobs around the house, like herding the 6 goats out of the living room and back into the backyard, where she would have me break up pieces of old furniture to repair the fence that constituted the Goat Pen.
Sometimes she would have me go to the store and get boxes, and when I got back she wanted me to use them to "re-enforce" the Goat Pen. "How should I do that? I would ask, and she would point to some weak spot in the pile of broken furniture, baling wire, tin roofing material and rotting pallets that served as a goat pen, and have me crawl on hands and knees to patch the breach with cardboard with pictures on cantelopes or tomatoes on it.
"Stuff it in nice and tight" she wold instruct.
Twice she asked me in for lunch, and said she was making tuna sandwiches, and I would stand by the stove and watch in horror as she assembled the sandwiches on a counter full of dirty dishes, pulling moldy bread from the wrapper to get to the "good" bread. and then trimming the black from a tomato and slicing it with some wilted lettuce, then she would open the biggest can of tuna I'd ever seen, and suddenly about a 100 cats would appear on the counter, meowingmeowingmeowing away, while she spooned tuna first onto the sandwich, and then into bowls for the cats, and finally just dumping the remainder of the can into the sink while her counter came alive with 100 more cats, meow, all trying to get to the sink like wildebeasts at the last waterhole left on the Serengeti.
Me, I would take the sandwich and do my best to pretend to eat it, but always somehow I managed to redirect it somewhere in the vicinity of the goatpen.
Finally, at the end of the day, she would tell me she hadnt been to the bank yet, but she'd be sure to go when I came back the next week to replace the goatpen, and mow her yard.
I don't know how long that went on, but at some point I stole some antiques out of her garage and tried to sell 'em.
Got caught.
I had to return her property, apologize to her, and continue to mow her yard and tend her goats, only now...

FOR FREE!
Can you believe that shit!