This morning, as I was walking around the back of the house after watering my flowers, I spied a lonely Cozy Coupe sitting forlornly by our shed, covered in cobwebs with a puddle of rainwater in the seat. For those of you unfamiliar with the Cozy Coupe, it’s a plastic ride-on toy designed to look like a car. Our version is reddish-orange with a yellow top. The front wheels spin 360 degrees (in case your child needs to spin out in some gravel for a quick getaway). It has a steering wheel with a (once functional) horn and a pretend key in the ignition to get the fun started.
I originally bought two of these from a yard sale for my daughters who are nearly 15, so I have no idea how old these cars actually are. My two younger sons have also had their turns with these toys. Where my daughters used the cars to take baby dolls on trips stopping to refill their gas tanks along the way, my sons would sit in the cars at the top of our sloping driveway and ask for a push to go careening down the hill.
This morning, seeing the tiny, pitiful car, I fully realized that we are done with the Cozy Coupes. All four of them are too big for these toys. Their legs are too long to sit comfortably inside. The plastic wheels aren’t designed for their weight. It’s time to move on.
I asked my youngest son Ezra to help me roll these cars, along with an old tricycle, out of the shed and up to the house where we could hose them off and wipe them down. I explained that we would make three signs that said: “FREE” and we would tape them on the toys and put them by the road.
Ezra liked the idea (especially the water hose part) and he started singing a little song: “Gimme money! Oooo! Gimme money! People gimme money for the cars…”
“Ezra,” I said, “We’re giving these away for free. That means they won’t give us any money.”
“No money?” he asked. “Oh. It’s okay.”
We got the cars and bike ready and we pulled them down to the grassy strip next to the sidewalk in front of our house. After the toys were situated, Ezra said, “Me sit here when people get the cars. Then I say, ‘Good luck’ and then people leave. It’s okay? You want chair too?”
I took a deep breath. I didn’t really want to sit by the side of the road all morning. Be a fun mom, I told myself. You can unload the dishwasher later. “Okay,” I answered, as we walked back down the driveway to the garage to get a couple of chairs.
Before we had returned to the road, there was a pickup truck pulled up next to the toys and a sedan in the driveway. It literally took 5 minutes for people to notice the FREE stuff we were giving away.
It’s been said that “there’s no such thing as a free lunch.” I know that this is mostly meant as a warning. It’s advice not to be taken in by scams that are just too good to be true. But there is actually free stuff out there.
There’s grace and love and sunshine. There’s free smiles and there’s free hugs. It is possible to get things for free with no strings attached. And somedays, if you’re really lucky, there’s a FREE Cozy Coupe by the road and a little boy wishing you “Good Luck!”
