Sell it to the birds

I hate selling stuff.

My deep-rooted aversion to selling shit started early in my life, I can recall instances of this proclivity dating as far back as middle school, where I was unfortunate enough to become the beneficiary (?) of a scholarship in a quasi-prestigious school in my city (this is all very vividly drawn from in my novel). As direct collateral of this honor (?) I was expected to sell twice as much more of any fund-raising crap the school administrators smoked up than my full-ticket price contemporaries. My parents (my mom in particular) sent everything we couldn’t manage to position back to the administration with a straight face and an upturned finger. By the time I was in high school I was fully trained in the discreet art of volleying back fund-raiser shit spiked my way. You may say I missed out on acquiring a necessary skill in today’s world, to which I would respond by taking your hand, walking you to my dining room, offering you a seat, and serving you a nice, big, piping hot plate of eff-u. I’m an EXCELLENT sales woman, I’ve sold piles of secondhand crap from my garage, my kids have outgrown a small warehouse’s worth of clothes and I’ve sold the majority of that and donated the rest to charity. I effectively put presents under the tree TWICE this way already, but the thing is when I sell my shit *I* decide what goes and how, and if I want to give something away for pennies on the peso because some sweet dad dude had his little kid sit on my son’s practically brand-new stroller and smile, then that’s my thing. Having someone else give me unnecessary overpriced tickets for some needless crap is NOT my jive. Telling me I MUST sell them or else, just makes my tolerance for bull reach critical mass.

I tanked selling door-to-door stuff once because I thought the product was ridiculous. I went supernova as an OPC in Vallarta because the thought of sending someone to a resort to effectively MISS OUT on a whole day of their vacation to sit through a stressful time-share sales pitch seemed CRIMINAL to me.

And now… I am a teacher. I have two kids enrolled in the private school where I work. Both of them are on scholarships. Sssshhh… do you hear that? That’s foreshadowing.

I’ve had to suffer the torment of selling whole boxes of chocolate because if I don’t my kids lose their scholarship. It's never on time, oh Lord, never on time... This year I have soccer moms breathing down my neck to pay for the fund raising tickets so their precious kins can win a pizza party. Most of these people pay for the tickets out of pocket. I admire that kind of commitment almost as much as I admire their blasé attitude about what constitutes a negligible expense, but it’s just not something I am able to do at the moment. I hope one day to be in a position where they try to give me a stack of tickets and I can just go “oh, ffs, this again? What do you need this time? Swimming pool? Here, lemme write you a check so you can get off my case.”

Luke is all up in my face again. Stand in line, Luke.