Answer: Homeless.

This reminds me of something interesting that happened to a friend of mine. Last year I was sitting out on my front porch when my friend rode up on a brand new, twelve-speed, top-of-the-line bicycle. I mean, this was the Rolls Royce of bicycles. It had an extra-padded seat, three dual-action cup holders, and a built-in tire inflation machine, so your tires were always at the perfect pressure.

I was a little awestruck at first. To my knowledge, my friend doesn’t come from a very wealthy family, and he doesn’t have any sort of job that I know of. Unless that bike fell from the sky, I really didn’t know how he could have gotten it.

“Jeesh man, that’s a really nice bike.” I said in a state of mild disbelief.

“Do you like it? It’s a custom Schwinn with all the extras,” my friend said smugly, “Even the bell is custom made. It plays the first movement of Modest Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition every time your pull the trigger.” He then pulled the lever for the bell, and the darn thing played Promenade from Pictures at an Exhibition in full; string parts and horns meticulously laid out in bicycle bell form. It was dreadful.

At this point I couldn’t contain myself anymore. “How did a chump like you get your grubby little hands on a bike like this?” As my friend is indeed a grubby little chump, he didn’t mind me pointing it out. However, it took a few more minutes of badgering for him to finally tell me where he got the bike from.

“Well, if you must know, I got it yesterday. I was walking home from school, minding my own business, when I heard someone yelling at me from behind. I turned around and saw this woman in the distance pedaling furiously towards me, shouting for me to wait up. I don’t know about you, but when a woman tells me to wait, I wait. As she got closer, I could make out some of her features, and I tell you, she was gorgeous. She could have been a Maxim magazine model. No, scratch that. She made Maxim magazine models look like fat, Turkish transvestites. She was so beautiful I was absolutely rooted in place until she finally reached me. As soon as she got to me, she hopped off her bike, took off all her clothes and shouted, ‘Take whatever you want!’ ”

I was stunned. What an idiot. I’ve seen some idiots in my day, but my friend absolutely takes the cake. I could feel myself getting dumber just by breathing the same air as he was.

“So you took the bike?” I muttered.

“Of course I took the bike,” he scoffed, “There’s no way her clothes would have fit me!”

(Many thanks to our good friend Charles for sending this one our way)