Beware the Modern Day Peddler

Originally published in The Fauquier Times-Democrat on April 20, 2007 and again on March 25, 2011.

The other day, an effusively smiling young man showed up outside my front door with a full 2-liter bottle of Coke. Was he a drug dealer pushing “coke?” Was he an admirer wooing me with sweet words and soft drinks? Or was he a criminal wielding a potential explosive?


I knew instantly he was pushing a particular line of vacuum cleaners, because last year they were handing out boxes of chocolates with a promise to return with a brief demonstration. If, like me, you declined the demo, they were happy to reclaim their bait box.


I’ve had that demo already – back in the days when I was younger and even more gullible. In nearly fifteen years of stay-at-home-dom, I’ve encountered many a salesperson. Most can be categorized as:


A. Sellers of candy, wrapping paper, or pledges so the children in their organization aren’t forced to play on equipment older than they are.


B. Sellers of candy or magazine subscriptions so they can stay off of drugs, out of gangs, fund their way to college, or win a trip to Europe.


C. Those selling cleaning appliances or cleaning agents, not to earn a living, but just to helpfully point out that, despite your best efforts, your home is a breeding ground of germs and microscopic insects.


I wonder if modern day peddlers are using the system once employed by hobos. Depending on the reception they had received, hobos would leave a drawing near the entrance of a house. Like a Nielsen rating of the occupants, the sign might be a warm apple pie, a fierce attack dog, or the muzzle of a shotgun.


I think someone has left a code on our doorstep: SUCKERS. Most of the time I can ward off those the peddler with a bawling baby or other convenient domestic excuse, but one day I fell victim to my own schemes.


The day I became a sucker, it was a Category C seller. Normally, when I open the door I don’t just let the character in, but as my husband was home I was a bit bolder. "Are you the Queen of the Castle?" the man with the spray bottle of cleaner queried as he oozed his rehearsed charm. “Queen of the Castle? QUEEN OF THE CASTLE?” I shrieked hysterically in my mind. Did this man step out of the 1950’s?


I don't know about QUEEN: yeah, I make the royal beds and do the royal dishes. Before I had a chance to respond, his spiel began. (I'm sure this steamrolling technique has a name and is taught to these folks who have the unenviable situation of earning a living this way.) His citrus cleaner, he boasted, even diluted to the millionth, was caustic on every stain known to man, yet safe for the environment and children who were into tasting cleaning agents. He rushed to a rust-stained segment of the sidewalk, poured some of the watered down stuff on it, scrubbed with a washcloth, and presto! The rust was magically gone. Then he took a lick of the stuff to prove his second point.


I had allowed myself to listen. I had listened! That was my first mistake. Whenever I get a Category C “Cleaning Peddler,” I harbor this evil thought. Let these people run all around my house with their cleaners, demonstrating how great their products are while I encourage them to remove this stain and that until my home is polished and sparkling. When it’s time to buy, I could conveniently forget how to speak English.


Then I had a stroke of genius. My husband had long ago stained his favorite shirt. The stain was in a spot that could be concealed by a sweater vest, so it was still in the closet. Also, we had used it to ward off other peddlers. I brought out the shirt - a little too gleefully, I admit. But this was the Master of Shrewd. He sealed the bargain, "So if I get out the stain, you'll buy it?" Others had attempted to scale this mountain of stain and failed miserably, so I accepted. My glee and delusions of genius should have been my clue.


Before too long this man attacked my husband’s shirt: pouring capful after capful on the stain, half-scrubbing with the washcloth and half-scraping the fiber off with his extremely long thumbnail. In the end, he held it up to the light. Most of the stain (and some of the fiber) was gone. I was stuck buying a $29-bottle of citrus cleaner.


I shouldn’t complain - the cleaner did resurrect my husband's favorite shirt and has since rescued a pair of oil-stained pants. But mostly, I am relieved to have the "shirt challenge" retired.


Not long after that incident, a young lady came selling the same stuff. She pointed to my partially cleaned rust stain on the sidewalk. “I know, I know,” I said wearily. “I bought the citrus cleaner from the last guy.” She looked puzzled. Why hadn’t I bothered to clean the rest? Forget the rust stain, I am looking to remove our SUCKER code.

School fundraisers: guaranteed to raise blood pressure and hackles

published in The Fauquier Times-Democrat Weekend on Friday, March 18th, 2011
 So, to continue from last week, do you know what else gets on my nerves?


I am sorry to sound completely self-centered. I should talk about the crisis in Japan: earthquakes, aftershocks, tsunamis, and nuclear meltdowns. But you can read about that in those “other” papers – and don’t pretend you don’t. I’ve seen you behind your Washington Post’s around town. So let’s just save ourselves the awkwardness and continue.


I can’t say that it’s the crying baby in the seat behind you when you are flying on a plane, because first of all, I have been the parent of that crying child. Trust me; it gets on the parent’s nerves too. Possibly on their last, and very frazzled, one. Secondly, it’s been about a decade since I was last on a plane – not for a matter of fear or choice, but that’s the way it has worked out.


I can’t say it’s obnoxious, pushy parents because I’ve been (am?) one of those too. We each have our time and place to get ugly. Some of us stay that way. (And I don’t mean physically.)


There are many contenders, but I will try to restrict my vacillations. People who flaunt big words are not in the running; I like that. Anyone who can stretch my vocabulary is welcome, because my belly, budget, and patience have all had to stretch too.


What gets on my nerves? School fundraisers. School fundraisers REALLY, REALLY, get on my nerves. The only kind of thing those raise for me is the hairs on my back. And please don’t be picturing my hairy back. I’m not picturing yours; so kindly do not be visualizing mine.


What I say now, I shall say with the greatest of care and trepidation. In case you haven’t noticed, the schools and this newspaper haven’t been on the friendliest of footing lately. I don’t want to step on anyone’s toes. If you refuse to dance with each other, that’s one way of avoiding treading on toes, I suppose. (Oooh! I made a rhyme.)


I have experienced many types of schooling with my six children in 20 years of motherhood: home schooling, public schooling, and private schooling. I was never brave or confident or foolish enough (take your pick) to do the “unschooling” thing. My “baby” just turned six a couple of weeks ago, so years of schooling loom before us. Incidentally, this week he recited pi to 50 decimal places, edging out high school students to win our school’s “A Pie for a Pi” contest. It was his idea, and his own motivation. I barely have two seconds to give to my own children any more.


It doesn’t seem to matter whether you are in public or private school: fundraisers are the common affliction of schooling. I am probably scarred from a childhood of selling cleaning supplies, light bulbs, citrus fruits, and Christmas wrapping paper. Ah, those were the good old days when you went door to door with that gigantic white envelope marked by gridlines on which to record the orders. There was only the occasional creepy character who answered the door and leeringly looked you up and down as you smiled stupidly and continued your sales pitch.


School fundraisers get my hackles up. I work for a school now, and certainly I can see the need for many things. Would higher salaries attract and retain better teachers? Positively. Would better equipment make life easier and more efficient? Probably. Can you teach some things without all the gadgetry? Perhaps. .


I understand that classrooms need things and special projects need funding. I understand the collective desire and/or need for more money. We live in America, and more is better, right? I’d prefer my kids not be involved.


You want them to study? Me too. You want them to develop good character, be good citizens who contribute to society? So do I. I just don’t see how selling Christmas wrapping, pricey fruit baskets, and auctioning off specialty baskets enter into that equation.


Are we teaching them about capitalism? I love those special projects they do at the elementary school, where all day long the students barter for things they have mutually cleared out of their parent’s closets, garages, and basements. What a symbiotic experience!


Have you attended Mountain Vista Governor’s School’s World Fair? The Warrenton campus at Lord Fairfax Community College is opening its City of Tomorrow to the public on Thursday, March 24th from 9 am to 10:45 am. Visitors receive “money” to invest in the most promising inventions. Middle school and 5th grade GT groups can contact DeAnne Wilmore at 347-6237 or at dwilmore@lfcc.edu to schedule a group visit. There must be myriad other examples, but these are ones I know about.


The latest fundraiser involves handing over to the school of choice your friends’ or families’ names, addresses, and contact information so the school can send out letters seeking donations. Sorry. I’m not selling my friends. I’ll have even fewer then. I don’t like it, and I’m not playing that game. More on this topic next week.

Home Parties and Buying Stuff you Don't Need

Published in The Fauquier Times-Democrat Weekend, Friday, March 11th, 2011
Do you know what really gets on my nerves?  No, not home parties in which people try to pawn products off onto their embarrassed friends who attended only so that they could


A) Socialize with friends


B) Munch on goodies that were sequestered from the host family’s appetite


C) Escape from their own domestic duties


D) All of the above


Rarely is the purpose of attending such a party to buy unnecessary things at exorbitant prices, all the while looking casual and carefree while wondering behind your smile how to tell your spouse that it wasn’t good enough to get away the whole evening; you also squandered next week’s grocery money.


Incidentally, have you ever noticed how these home parties spread among friends, like bread mold or some viral or bacterial infection, rippling from an inner circle out to unsuspecting friends and acquaintances? This is where the term “hosting” a party conjures not hospitality, but a biological organism who unwittingly serves as a medium for pathogens to thrive on.


There are home parties for cookware, Tupperware, silver, jewelry, make-up, decorative things, and women’s undergarments in which you are guaranteed to be fitted so that your cup neither runneth over nor saggeth under. Of course, I know there exist other, racier home parties, but I haven’t been invited to any of those. Thank God. Let’s keep it that way.


The wildest I have ever gotten with these sort of home parties is Tupperware. It wasn’t the Tupperware that was so wild, it was the idea that I thought I could or should host another party of my own so that the hostess of the infecting, I mean, original, party could get bonus points, deeper discounts on her own purchases, and that mega, three-cooler picnic set as a thank you gift.


In order for the hostess to get the gift, the other parties that were spawned from her original, had to be executed within a couple of weeks, like some punishment for an offense before the dust from all the evidence settles.


The thing about gifts is that the very term implies that it is free. Last time I checked, a gift was something given willingly, and something that the recipient did need not to prove his or her worth for. Oh wait – let me save this thread for the Easter column.


Anyway, the time that I tried to host a home party was back in the 80’s. The 1980’s, thank you, in case you had some image of me picking cotton and then returning from the fields after dark to host some sort of Pewter-ware Party. Yes, I am taunting readers for feedback. You haven’t been writing to me, so I must goad you.


There were a couple of fatal flaws with my grand plans to host a Tupperware party. First, I had pretty much the same circle of friends as the hostess. In fact, if anything, mine was a subset of her circle – at best, it was a smaller ring, like a dartboard target, when compared to my pastor’s wife who was, at the time, the young mom of a preschooler and a newborn. So naturally, my guest list was going to happily include these same lucky women to come attend a duplicate party in rapid succession.


The second fatal flaw involved my few, extra-circle friends. These friends were fellow students, both undergraduates (overworked) and graduate students (underfed), whose only interest in Tupperware was what it might contain and whether it might still be consumable. They did like parties, of course, but Tupperware rarely featured in them.


And what did Tupperware parties lack? Glossy brochures were pressed upon us so we could look at, and long for, the kind of life in which Mom molded Jell-O letters so she could spell out each child’s name on his or her dessert plate.


“Games” were played in which you might find yourself the lucky winner of a tangerine-teaser, which was a variant of the orange opener, which itself was a specialized form of the citrus peeler. If you won all three, there was a special snap-on ring onto which each of your spoons could be affixed. You probably already had all these tools amongst your battalion of kitchen gadgets, not including your own God-given fingernails and teeth, which had once, before the arrival of Tupperware, been foolishly believed to be effective in the war on citrus fruits. Clearly, that was a generation of vitamin-C deprived individuals who were deficient in their thinking.


On the day of my own Tupperware party, it dawned on me that attendees would be deficient. I called the representative so I could spare her time and I could spare my shame. Perhaps I was more vitamin-C deprived than I had believed. I think then I made a solemn promise to not be embarrassed into hosting a party with this childish chant: “cross my heart, hope to die, stick a citrus peeler in my eye.”


Good thing, though, that it’s not home parties that really get on my nerves. More next week.

Street Smarts – Part III - Apology Accepted

published in The Fauquier Times-Democrat Weekend on Friday, March 4, 2011
This is the final part of a three-part series of columns.


My teenaged son, whom we shall call “Fred,” had offended a neighbor lady up the street while walking his dog. The neighbor had followed up with a visit to our home to complain of “Fred’s” behavior. We coaxed and reproved Fred and then, by the magic of online money transfers, subtracted $25 from Fred’s account. He was then, quite literally, driven out of the house (by car), to purchase and deliver flowers, candy, and a card for the neighbor. Rejoin this column as Fred is writing in the card.


We sat in our semi-darkened car as he filled the blank card with words. I was not going to allow this to be one of those situations where we have all the best intentions to “do it later” and then promptly forget to follow through. (Have I yet written to the ladies of the Christian Women’s Club of Warrenton and Zoar Baptist Church who sent us $200 at Thanksgiving, knowing that my husband, formerly the sole breadwinner – despite my recent contributions as a crumb-collector of sorts – was hospitalized? If my plans and actions would ever align, I might have less need to be ashamed of myself. Carrying this burden about mars one’s ability to lecture others, especially one’s children.)


Though it was cold, he sat and wrote. His words were neither contrived nor produced under duress. They were sincere, if a little stiff. You see, Fred is obstinate. He refuses to concede any point when he is convinced he is right. The problem with Fred, as with most of us, is that he always seems to be right about almost everything. (Or so he thinks.)


My son’s face stiffens when he believes you are talking some rubbish. He and his face don’t mind conveying this sentiment, either. That must have been the face that he gave our neighbor: impassive, but seething within. His lips are set and his eyes are squinted and hardened. You aren’t going to get past that steel façade easily.


If you do, though, he has an incredibly winning smile. When things go well, or he finally admits to mischief, he has the most handsome and infectious smile. He refuses to oblige you with a fake smile, so if you get one, it is genuine and rewarding.


So Fred wrote from his semi-steel heart. I don’t have his words verbatim. After our shopping and sitting together in the car – just the two of us, I felt I had truly won him over. He may not have written that he was sorry, but he said he was sorry for the way he had behaved. As we sat and talked, Fred finally understood our neighbor’s concern for the safety of the dogs, the younger children playing in the neighborhood, and for the owner of the two dogs who also happened to be in the final stages of pregnancy, and the danger that a dogfight might have imposed upon this woman. He might have written that he was grateful to have such a neighbor.


I, too, was grateful: grateful to have a caring neighbor and such a son, who despite his steely determination would allow chinks of oil to seep in and soften him once in a while.


We returned to our subdivision, and drove up the hill in the neighborhood. It was difficult to spot the house from which this neighbor might have emerged. We knew where the two dogs lived. From there it was an educated guess as to which of the houses it might be across the street.


“That one. The one with the brown door,” my son seemed to become more certain as we examined house after house of brick-front, shuttered constructions. We both went to the door.


A young woman breezily opened the door. She was perhaps wiping her hands from a meal. My son proffered the flowers and chocolates, but hesitated, suddenly mired in confusion. He did not recognize her being the woman who had yelled at him earlier. “Wait,” he said awkwardly. “Are you the one I had an argument with today?”


We described the events of the afternoon. “Oh,” she said, knowingly nodding her head. “That would be Kerri Pepin, next door.”


Kerri Pepin? Now it all made sense. I already knew her as another mom from Mrs. Stright’s kindergarten class at C.M. Bradley a few years ago. I knew and liked Kerri.


We went next door, but Kerri wasn’t available, so we spoke with Tom, her husband.


My son apologized to the husband of the woman he had offended. He handed over his portion of the peace treaty. Tom was very gracious and appreciative of the visit.


Kerri and I spoke afterward. She said the thing that had impressed her the most about my son’s apology was the card – that he had written a card.


You know what? Me too. I’m glad my son is still somewhat pliable (occasionally), and I’m glad we live in a time and place when neighbors can watch out for each other and their children.