On Saturday morning, I got a knock on my door. I opened it up to be greeted by a smiley face and a set of waving hands. It was early, I was tired and it took me a little longer than it should have to realise he was deaf.
He had a little card prepared. It said that he was trying to raise money to go to a special deaf school and so he was going around selling his drawings. I thought - well that's a nice idea, let's hope he's not really shit so I don't have to embarrass both of us by pretending to be impressed by his crappy drawings.
He showed me his drawings, all pencil renderings, and they were technically pretty good, if a little bland, but then I guess the door-to-door market probably gravitates towards bland so they were likely perfect for the target market. Seemed like a nice guy and a worthy cause and I thought it's always a good idea to support another artist.
So I bought one.
It was a while later when I actually really looked at the drawing. Yeah, it was a pencil drawing alright - I knew that from the familiar shiny marks on my fingers. But, hang on. There was more to it than that. There was a printed drawing underneath. He had just drawn over a printed drawing, just enough so that the surface looks like a genuine pencil rendering. I don't even know that the print-out came from one of his drawings or some picture he pulled from the 'net. What a scam.
Who knows how deep the scam went. Maybe there is no special school. Maybe he was just looking for cash to feed his heroin habit. Who knows...
Scammed by a deaf guy. It's just not right.
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