Did you know that you need to own a forklift right this very second?  I know I didn’t until I got this one, and I’m PRETTY sure you’ll feel the same way once I pass it on to you.  I’ve checked out my competitors, and this is pretty much THE best deal you’re going to find this side of the Rockies.

Why did I get a forklift in the first place, you ask?  Why am I now passing it off to you, you query?  And why would an Episcopalian youth preacher from Puyallup, Washington need a forklift capable of lifting and maneuvering up to 22,000 lbs. with relative ease, you pontificate?  Why don’t you just let me worry about that.

Let me get real for a second.  I’m practically giving this thing away for 10,000 bucks.  I mean, brand new these things go for at least 10,200, 10,300 easy.  And I might even be willing to take a loss on this since I need to get it off my hands in, oh I don’t know, let’s say the next two days.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s in great condition.  Handles like a dream.  Lifts to full height in under 20 seconds.  Definitely wasn’t used to steal an 8 foot tall golden Buddha statue from the front yard of the Koyasan temple, a crime for which there may or may not be an impending police investigation.   You know, one that will almost certainly find my fingerprints on the forklift’s steering wheel and match them to when I got arrested in college.  It was for nothing really, just dyeing my body green and hiding naked on the football turf for the coach to find me the morning of the championship game against the Gonzaga bulldogs.  Man, those were the days.  But really, I’m doing you guys a service for giving this away so cheap.

If you aren’t sold just yet on what exactly you would do to get your money’s worth out of an investment like this, allow me to suggest a few possibilities:

  • Surprise your neighbor who’s moving by picking up their above-ground pool and transporting it to their new abode, water and all.
  • Help organize all the giant 100-pound sacks of quinoa and kale chips that you donated to the local soup kitchen, but for some reason, nobody has bothered using yet.
  • Support your family by moonlighting as a piano deliveryman (you know what they say, you can tune a piano, but a fish never needs tuned!)
  • Put a tent on top of it, attach LEDs and caution tape, and enter it in your local high school’s homecoming parade as a 1950’s mobile nuclear fallout shelter.
  • Spread the Good News to that heathen neighbor of yours Bill who has a different woman over every night but claims it’s only for English-as-a-second-language classes by personally delivering 500 copies of the large-print New Testament directly into his second-story bedroom window.  He’s not fooling anybody with that “Learn Good English Better Now Today!!!” sign in his front yard.  YOU’VE BANGED EVERY COUNTRY IN THE UNITED NATIONS AT LEAST TWICE, AND I’M NOT THE ONLY ONE KEEPING COUNT, BILL.

I’m telling you, take the damn thing off my hands, and you’ll love every minute of it.

Chances are, if you go anywhere else to find a forklift, you’re a moron.  Do you really trust all those lawyers and politicians out there who are selling forklifts to tell you the truth about the condition of their product?  Mine, I’ll tell it to you straight, since that’s what God would want.  The forks are a little scratched, which is nothing a quick buff with some car wax wouldn’t take care of.

Other than that, you can hardly tell where the front wheel was bent from that time I accidentally ran over poor Mrs. Oldenbaum after service one day.  I don’t want to make it seem like it was her fault, but let’s just say I was hoisting something shaped like an 8 foot tall golden Buddha statue from the front yard of the Koyasan temple (shaped LIKE it, I didn’t say that WAS it) and I might not have been able to see where I was going.

I don’t know why she didn’t hear me coming; I had just gotten her that new hearing aid for last Saint Bartholomew the Apostle Day.  Not to mention the new glasses I got her after she dropped her old ones into our bottomless baptismal font when I gave her a hearty slap on the back as congratulations for her 87th annual birthday baptism.  Or the walker I so graciously supplied when she could no longer make it to the altar for our six supplications during each service.  Or the new heart I donated to her from our spring calf slaughter that we perform as part of the Celebration of Leviticus.

Now, I don’t want to make it seem like you’re doing me a favor or anything by buying this, but if you don’t, just know that every sin you’ve ever committed will be held against you when the great star Wormwood falls from the heavens and poisons the rivers and seas.  And I mean everything, even that one time you hid in your sister’s closet when she had her friends over for a slumber party, even though you swear you were only looking for your copy of Pokémon Emerald that she hid from you after you stuck her with the dishes two nights in a row.  I’m just saying, I can put in a good word with the big guy, and you certainly need one.  Now is that a deal, or what?

-Josh Bodner, Contributor