I was feeding my pasture pets last night, and giving some words of affection to the donkey (as one does). I told him he was the best free thing I ever got, and immediately wanted to walk that statement back. So many of my animals came free of charge, and I wouldn’t want to rank them!
So, aside from living creatures, then…what terrific thing did you get free, gratis, for nothing?
I’m still pondering my answer.
Ohhh… hard to say. Maybe the 69 Ford Torino GT with 50k original miles. Certainly the most valuable. Or the 65 Ford F-250 which I used much more, and still own. But the 89 BMW is right up there in terms of ‘Love this car!’
I’ll just say, ‘Car’.
When I was headed off to college, I got a free car. This is not your standard “Grandma giving kid her old car” trope, no siree!
So, my sister is a year older than me. She had gotten a job in a graphics arts shop. Being only 19 and all, she caught the eye of the male owner. She reciprocated (or whatever you kids are calling it these days). Male owners wife found out that they were…reciprocating…and that was the last straw for her, so divorce ensued. In splitting up their assets, they had an extra older car that neither wanted to keep. And they didn’t feel it was worth any money, so free to whomever. My sister, thoughtful as ever, offered that maybe I could use the car, seeings that I didn’t have one and was headed off to college. After what I’m sure was some eye rolling and heavy sighs, someone said, “Sure, why not.”
The really awkward part was that the title was in wifey’s name. So, when it came time to pick up the car, we had to troop over to her new place and get her to sign it over to me. Yeah, my sister got your man, and I got your car.
A year later I sold it for $100 (this was back in the 1970’s).
I just installed part of a staircase, and was marveling at the torque that my tiny electric screwdriver has…
…my tiny FREE electric screwdriver!
I was asking an old Home Depot guy which screwdriver I should buy, when he starts rummaging through a cabinet and pulls out this cute Black&Decker. “When we carried these, they were the best we’d ever had. Now we just have this demo model. No charger, no bits, and… no cost to you!”
My 8 O’Clock Bean Coffee Grinder we got for free about 25 years ago by sending in UPC codes. It’s still working.
13 years of education.
Tattoos. I became interested in the idea of getting “a” tattoo thirty some years ago. I approached the idea cautiously, and along the way became good friends with one of Pittsburgh’s big names in tattooing, in part because of other things we had in common.
When I finally decided what I wanted and where I wanted it to be, my friend designed some original art. I asked what kind of money I was going to need to come up with, and my friend said he’d rather not charge a friend, and maybe at some point I could “pass it on” as it were.
Well, one tattoo led to another led to a half sleeve led to…you know how it goes. Along the way some of my friend’s apprentices suggested work they’d like to do for me that would compliment what my friend had done and they too declined to charge, wanting instead to share our friend’s canvas.
Sadly, one day my friend died. A few years later I coincidentally met an old friend of my friend (she recognized my ink) who I somehow had never met before. She was down on her luck and via another coincidence I was perfectly suited to help her out, which I did.
This house. I grew up here, from age 13-17, then went off on my own, mostly in NYC. I was almost 50 when my father got Alzheimer’s, so I moved back here to help mom take care of him. My then-bf bought the house next door. Dad passed away, and I stayed here to take care of mom. Then she passed and bf moved in with me. Then we got married. So here we are.
It’s a beautiful brick house with two fireplaces, built in 1936, in a nice older suburb.
My smartphone.
I was perfectly happy with my flip phone and had no intention of getting a smartphone until my father’s near insistence that I take his two year old one as a hand-me-down. He’s one of those guys that have to has the latest and greatest, and so in another year he got another, and so I ended up with a near top of the line, year-old one. As in the first, gratis.
Bang for buck wise, it’s the handiest thing I’ve acquired. ( though I still miss the compactness and long battery life of my flip-phones )
My dad bought me a car when I went off the college, and when I graduated he signed the title over to me as a graduation present. It was a five year old (at the time he bought it) base model Saturn, so it’s not like it was an expensive car, but it was a reliable, fuel efficient, basic transportation car. But the reason I consider the best thing I got for free was because I kept that car for 15 years. I brought it with me when I moved to California when I got my first real salaried job, thought about replacing it just because I could afford to, but opted to keep it. I’m sure much of why it lasted so long was because I commuted by bike in those days, so it didn’t get driven much (that was why I decided it wasn’t worth buying a new car). And it was really nice to not have to pay for a car for literally all of my 20s. The reason I finally got rid of it was because it almost always failed California’s smog test on it’s first attempt, and I got tired of having to fix some new emissions related thing every two years.
Slight hijack: Biggest scam in the world! Shit-hook tweeks the result so you have to pay for them to ‘fix’ something, then, A Miracle! It passes. 
Because the state considered my car “likely to fail” (I’m not sure what criteria they used for that) I was required to take it to a “test only” shop. I assume by making me take it to a place that doesn’t do repairs, they were trying to prevent that scam.
Re-hijack - I’ll bet the biennial smog fix was slightly less than two years of car payments?
Dan
I never actually did the math, but probably.
Although for a while I was able to get financial assistance from the state to help pay for the repairs. It used to be that if your car was required to be tested at a test-only place like I mentioned above, you pretty much automatically qualified for financial assistance regardless of your income. They have ended that now though, now you have to qualify based on income. But it was really nice to have the state pay $500 towards a new catalytic converter.
Does my little brother count? Because seriously. He rocks.
Nope. He’s a living thing. 
When I bought my house my realtor was renovating her house. She gave me a fridge, a sectional, an end table and a sofa table. The fridge was old and didn’t last long before I replaced it. The sectional I used for MANY years. The end table is still is use, and the sofa table is too.
In fact the only new furniture I’ve ever bought is my TV stand. Everything else, in the living room and basement, have been donated to me or I bought second hand (current couch).
Refrigerators used to last forever. Long ago I needed a fridge. A foaf had an avocado side-by-side he wanted to sell, asking $25. I borrowed a friend’s truck and drove over to get it. The dude was moving and offered the fridge for free if I’d first help him move his bed to his new abode, so I got the (ugly) fridge for free.
A few years later I was moving to Philadelphia to a furnished apartment. I gave the fridge to my buddy Jeff for his camp. He was thrilled, it was exactly what he needed.
A year after that, Jeff remodeled his camp, got a new fridge, and gave the avocado side-by-side to a friend going through a divorce.
When I returned to western Pennsylvania from Philly four years later, I went to a party. A friend at the party asked me to go with him to get an ounce of weed; it was a “bad neighborhood” and I was his “muscle”. We were sitting at the dealer’s kitchen table while he weighed out the ounce.
I said “wow, I once had an ugly refrigerator that looked just like that”. He glared at me, then said it was a cool fridge. I looked him in the eye and said, “goofy epoxy painted dancing broccoli and carrots on the produce drawer?”
And with that the circle was complete. We left with the ounce my friend bought and a story I still can’t believe.
Laid.
An interview with Pete Townshend.