Smack me and label me naive, but this year I took a chance on Ebay to win a Macbook Air. I begged a seller to sell me the coveted piece of machinery for $1300 (instead of the normal price of $3000), because I need a change from the torture of lugging a 10 pound laptop around campus in dizzyingly hot Florida. He sympathized with me, saying that since he had once been a student, he understood my situation. He also said that because he is a minister, he wanted to help me.

 

I was sold. I sent him the money-- all the money I have saved for an entire semester. My faith was in this seller, with whom I established a sort of friendly relationship, sharing college woes and triumphs.

 

It wasn’t until a month later that I’d realized maybe my stroke of good luck was just the beginning of a long period of disappointment.

 

“I’ll send it to you as soon as I can” became “Sorry, someone hacked into my account and now I’m banned from selling” became “Sorry again, I have to go out of state, because my father died.” And because I trusted him, I waited five long months for him to send it to me.

 

Every day I think what that $1300 could have been used for—fixing the air conditioning in my car, or perhaps its broken window.  Maybe my $300 Japanese textbook. But it doesn’t do to dwell on the past.  I’ve seen all of the sob stories from Ebay users, but I don’t take my anger out on the company that had nothing to do with the scam. I’m more hurt that someone that I trusted, a declared minister no less, could bring my hopes up so high and crush them month after month—how someone could take a student’s hard-earned money and feign friendship at the same time.

 

I’m a bit more jaded than I once was, but I suppose the whole situation opened my eyes to how dishonest people can be. I’m still happy-go-lucky me, but I’ve learned a valuable life lesson.