Blog by Sumana Harihareswara, Changeset founder
Care for a sample of the beadseller's cant? Rainbow beads, rainbow…
Hi, reader. I wrote this in 2002 and it's now more than five years old. So it may be very out of date; the world, and I, have changed a lot since I wrote it! I'm keeping this up for historical archive purposes, but the me of today may 100% disagree with what I said then. I rarely edit posts after publishing them, but if I do, I usually leave a note in italics to mark the edit and the reason. If this post is particularly offensive or breaches someone's privacy, please contact me.
Care for a sample of the beadseller's cant?
Rainbow beads, rainbow flags, rainbow leis, rainbow braids. One, two, three, five dollars, rainbow beads, starting at just one dollar. Colorful, festive, and inexpensive. I got rainbow beads, starting at just one dollar. Care to buy some rainbow beads? I'm selling rainbow flags and rainbow beads, rainbow beads and rainbow flags, rainbow chains and rainbow leis, starting at just one dollar.
I've made up cants before, for hawking my classes, so this wasn't hard. I saw other beads reps, colleagues of mine, not barking! Not individually asking festivalgoers, "Care to buy some beads? Just one dollar for some of these." They just wore all the merchandise and waited for customers to come to them. No wonder I sold the most; my competitors were positively shy.
