Caveat Emptor

An "old" reflection I pulled up after a conversation last night reminded me of the "reconditioned" person I am.

When I started to write this, I was sitting in a Starbucks on a Sunday afternoon with a cold cup of coffee, waiting for a friend to rescue me. This unpleasant (and ego-deflating) damsel-in-distress situation, as always, had its purpose. I wanted to drive far away that day to look at some water, reflect and listen and write. But, true to form, God seemed to have other plans!

Here’s the story: my brand-new car battery gave out on me. How immensely irritating. Although this sort of thing has always happened to me with almost every car I’ve ever driven, I always forget that the newly installed unit is still unused to the electrical demands of its new home and is expected to give out once every so often until it eventually gets used to the amount of use (and abuse, in my case) it is subjected to. It’s a major hassle I’ve never quite learned to avoid, especially when the old pop-the-clutch trick refuses to work.

Anyway, aside from “ruining” my plans for the day and serving as a fitting reminder that an independent woman should always carry a set of jumper cables in her purse, the battery incident provides a good segue to something I promised someone I’d write about.

A few nights before my brand-new maintenance free (sheeyeeah right) source of vehicular power passed away, my best friend and I were talking about being “refurbished goods.” This, opposed to “brand-new-out-of-the-box.”

When I was shopping in the US, I went to this watch store where they were selling “reconditioned” designer watches at jaw-dropping discounts. And yet, despite the tempting prices, you couldn’t help but be wary about them – caveat emptor (“buyer beware”) indeed, because these were watches that had gone wrong sometime ago but had now been fixed and given second chances. These watches, much like people, had once been broken, dropped, beaten up, stepped on, left out in the elements…or had just simply self-destructed, until they were given up for being useless pieces of once-pretty junk. But after spending some time in the hands of patient, skilled artisan who could see that they still had some value and were still worth saving, they were good as new and back on the shelf again. The question is, even at bargain basement prices, would anyone want to take a chance and buy them? Or would the brand-new, still-in-the-box, undamaged goods still be the commodity of choice?

Refurbished goods. Reconditioned people. I’m sure some of us can imagine exactly what it’s like being a rehabilitated designer watch. You look good as new, and you act and tick as if you have a new lease on life, but it’s difficult to ignore the very real possibility that you just might fall apart again. You know that whoever cautiously put you into their shopping cart and took you home has, in the back of their mind, the thought that you might disappoint once again and that they may end up kicking themselves for having put their trust in and spent their money on once-defective merchandise. And you know that the one person who is most aware of the cracks that have been lovingly mended over, of the nicks and scrapes that have patiently been sanded away, of the delicate interior parts that have been restored and reconstructed, and of the fragility of the entire repair job, is yourself…the refurbished watch, the reconditioned individual.

I once had a conversation with someone who is admittedly and undoubtedly “brand-new-out-of-the-box.” We were talking about the parable of the laborers in the vineyard (Matthew 20: 1-16) and how it seemed to be unreasonably inequitable, especially for the laborers who started working at daybreak, that everyone - including the lazy louts who began laboring only in midday or worse, at the eleventh hour – would receive the same reward at the end of the day. And yet, from the viewpoint of goods like myself who are admittedly and undoubtedly refurbished, I believe there is truly no unfairness in the situation. Reconditioned goods, the laborers who were given a second chance to be useful, have seen the bottom of the trash bin or felt the rejection of having been traded in for something that “works.” Unlike the brand-new-out-of-the-box or the laborers who came at daybreak who found their purpose immediately and were set to work to it early, rehabilitated people, those who came later, suffered from a long period of purposelessness and useless floundering about until they were finally called. The brand-new who came early enjoyed the presence and favor of their Master and the value of His instruction for a longer period; those who came late missed out on a whole lot and have a lot of making up to do. Those who came first knew shelter in the box, in the vineyard, and were spared from the worldliness outside; those who came after were exposed to the cruel elements and now have to strip away all the rust and hardness and habits acquired over the years before being truly functional.

And yet, in the case of reconditioned goods, second-hand is not necessarily second-rate. How happy the long-idle men must have been to finally be given respectability, even at the eleventh hour, through the recognition that they too could be of some value in the vineyard! How joyful must the battered and beaten watch be that someone took a risk on its worth, despite its apparent inutility! Can you imagine how much harder the beholden laborer and the grateful watch would work, would tick, would seek approval from the One who gave them a second chance?

Back to my brand-new battery. A few days after it had to be recharged, it went completely dead. I took it back to my friendly neighborhood electrical shop and they initially couldn’t believe that something was wrong with the new unit they’d just sold me the previous week. “It’s your alarm, there’s something wrong with it,” they said. After a long and frustrating period of watching them tinker around trying to find out what was wrong with my electrical system, I said, “I might be a stupid female driver who obviously has no clue about what goes on under the hood of my vehicle, but will you please check the battery?” They protested aplenty, but finally relented, and voila! Turns out the stupid no-clue female driver was right after all. How did they find out the brand-new battery was a dud? They stuck in a reconditioned battery, and my car purred like a happy kitten. Enough said.

By the way, because of a wonderful thing called a warranty, I now have a brand-new maintenance free battery that hasn’t given out on me so far. The one I traded in is in the process of being reconditioned, as we speak. :-)

16 October 2003