a Russian Mary Kay story.

In the not-so-distant past, I lived in Minneapolis. I moved there for a number of reasons, the primary one being that I was too broke to stay in New Orleans. Relocating to Minneapolis would mean being closer to my family and friends, having affordable housing by moving in with James as he student-taught near the cities, and completing my third and final museum internship.

Upon my arrival in Minneapolis, I did have one job waiting for me: my incredibly handy clothing store job. Since I worked for a national chain, all I had to do was request a transfer from one store to the next. I had been hired in Denver and had transferred to New Orleans from there; then, from New Orleans to Minneapolis.

Unfortunately, my clothing store job in Minneapolis ended up being incredibly part-time. While in Denver, I had worked during back-to-school season; in New Orleans, it was Black Friday and Christmas shopping. However, it was January when I got to Minneapolis, and there were no big shopping events on the horizon. I was lucky to get one or two shifts a week. And let me tell you, one or two shifts a week on minimum wage just wasn’t going to cut it.

Feverishly, I searched for an additional job. This was a great deal harder than you might think: my internship required a minimum of twenty hours a week, so my new job had to be able to work around that. Most mainstream part-time jobs wouldn’t want to deal with that: jobs were scarce, and there were plenty of people with better availability than me. So I turned to the dark side.

And by the dark side, I mean Craigslist. Craigslist jobs tended to be a little on the odd side; not something you’d necessarily see in the Star Tribune classifieds. Frankly, that’s exactly what I needed: the more off-beat a job was, the more willing they would be to work with my schedule.

It didn’t take long before I got not one, not two, but THREE interviews for jobs I’d applied for on Craigslist. The first interview was at a facility that hosted consumer panels, and I was offered the job on the spot. They were not sure how many hours a week I would be working, so I forged ahead with the two other interviews. The second interview was at an interpreting agency where I would help recruit medical interpreters. I got this job as well (and would stay with this company for a year and a half). Even with three jobs and an internship, I thought that there may be room for one more. You can always use more money, right? That brings me to my final Craigslist interview (and what this story is ultimately about).

The first two job interviews had been in actual office buildings, which began to restore my faith in Craigslist after my New Orleans Craigslist landlord disaster. However, this last interview was a step backwards, to say the least. The title of the position was something like “customer service assistant,” and the Russian woman I spoke with on the phone was fairly vague about what the job actually was. The interview was on a Friday in February; there was a music educators’ convention that same weekend, so James and I going to head downtown immediately after my interview to meet our music teacher friends.

As James and I looked for this mysterious address, we found ourselves in the middle of residential suburbia: not a good sign. “Are you SURE you got the address right?” said James, wondering if he’d ever see me alive again. I was pretty sure I’d written it down correctly. We came to a stop in front of a shabby little house that matched the address on my scrap of paper. “What if you just skipped the interview?” said James hopefully. “You have three jobs already!” No, I had to go. It would be rude to stand the Russian lady up, after all. I had no idea how long the interview would last, so James said he’d come back in twenty minutes. “If you’re not out of that house in one hour, I’m coming in,” said James valiantly.

With that, I ascended the cracked concrete stairs up to the front door. Apprehensively, I rang the doorbell. Almost immediately, the door opened, and I was greeted by a heavily made-up Russian woman named Tatiana. She enthusiastically invited me into her house, which was incredibly warm and smelled of stew meat. Tatiana sat me down on her striped couch, and she propped her slippered feet up on the coffee table.  “Tell me all about yourself,” Tatiana directed in her heavy accent. I gave her a quick run-through of my education and my customer service-related work history. “Ok, ok,” she said impatiently. “Now tell me this: do you like makeup?” Do I like makeup? What kind of question was that for a job interview? I hesitantly answered, “Yes… ?” Tatiana looked pleased. “Good,” she said. After she went on for a while about the “transformative powers of makeup,” Tatiana said abruptly, “How much do you know about Mary Kay?”

It took nearly everything I have in me not to get up and leave right then. There was no way that I was going to sell Mary Kay. I’m sure the products are great, but I’ve never been an independent sales kind of gal. I told Tatiana that I’d never tried any Mary Kay products, nor had I ever sold any. Tatiana then launched into an epic tale about how she has a PhD in physics, but she was never TRULY happy until she quit her job as a professor and began selling Mary Kay.

That was all lovely, but finally, I had to ask: what exactly would my job BE? Tatiana explained that she had a list of brides-to-be, and I was to call them and tell them that they had “won” a facial and – lucky them! – they could bring as many friends as they would like. I quickly realized that it was just a thinly-veiled plot to scrape up some Mary Kay customers.

That was the end of part one of my interview. Yes: it was a two-parter. Tatiana asked me to meet her at a nursing home next week: she was hosting a Mary Kay get-together, and she would like to give me a “makeover” so I would know just what it was that I was pitching to the unsuspecting brides. Apparently, I had to “pass” the makeover to get the job. I didn’t particularly WANT the job, but without question, could make good use of the extra money. I agreed to get made-over the following week.

I informed James and my parents of my interview, and all of them were fairly certain that I was about to be sold into white slavery. I assured them that it was nothing like that; I was just helping out a busy Mary Kay woman. It would be fine.

The next week, I went to the nursing home to get my makeover. I was greeted by a very enthusiastic Tatiana, who sat me down and had me watch a video about Mary Kay herself. Let me tell you, it was captivating (insert sarcasm). When the video was over, I found that several other women had arrived. It turned out that Tatiana was the leader of some sort of sales team, and these women were the sales representatives. The arrival of these women heralded the beginning of my makeover, which mostly consisted of them squirting moisturizer on a paper plate and having me pick out eyeshadow samples. Believe it or not, the best was yet to come: Mary Kay trivia. Tatiana and her sales reps quizzed me on factoids from the documentary, and for every question I got right, I got a letter: if I got enough letters to spell “beautiful,” I won a fabulous prize. I lost the game (can you blame me?), but I still got a handful of consolation prizes: body spray, a makeup bag, and gold eyeliner. Classy.

Tatiana spent the rest of the evening trying to convince me to ditch this customer service job and become a member of the sales representative team instead. For just the cost of a sales starter kit, I could be well on my way to fame and fortune – and that elusive pink Cadillac. 

Tempting.

I politely declined, saying that I’d rather have the customer service job. Tatiana promptly asked me when I could start (but instructed me to keep the possibility of being a sales representative in mind).

So I had the job. All the work would be performed at her house, I learned on my first day. Tatiana asked me to work from 6pm to 9pm on my first day. I had to come straight from an eight-hour day at the museum, so I distinctly remember trying not to starve during this initial “shift.” This first shift was to be a training session, and I would find out exactly how shady this whole operation was.

Tatiana appeared with a multi-page spreadsheet of names, phone numbers, and locations. The names were of all the brides-to-be. I had to wonder where she had gotten all these names. Tatiana must’ve read my mind: all these brides had signed up on some sort of bridal registry, like David’s Bridal. Apparently, on the registration form, there’s some fine print that says the bride consents to be contacted by outside vendors if she does NOT check a certain box.

Right off the bat, this gave me sort of a bad feeling. My feeling worsened when I heard Tatiana go through the first call. She gave me an elaborate script so I could follow along. The whole thing was just disgusting. Tatiana’s written introduction went like this: “Have you ever won anything in your life?” Yes, I was supposed to ask this and be totally serious. Then, “How would you feel if I told you that you won a FREE BRIDAL FACIAL?!” At this point, most of the brides hung up (and I don’t blame them for a second). Every now and again, though, someone took the bait. If she did, it was up to me to schedule an appointment in Tatiana’s giant Mary Kay appointment book.

I spent those first three hours listening to Tatiana sweet talk potential customers. She didn’t book very many appointments, but I got the gist of it. During my next shift, Tatiana listened in on my phone calls to brides. I don’t remember if I got any appointments or not, but Tatiana was very pleased with my “phone personality.” She only listened in for an hour or so, and then she left me to myself. I flipped through the spreadsheet, making sure that there was no one I knew on the list. I was supposed to keep track of what day and what time I called and if I got a voicemail. If I spoke to a person, I needed to note what they said and if they were hostile. Tatiana had several other women doing the same tasks as me, and there were several notes saying things mostly along the lines of “called me a bitch and told me never to call again.” This was clearly a dream job.

Slowly, I made the calls, and I hated every second of it. By the time my next shift rolled around, I had already begun to leave fake voicemails (aka not actually call the person, but go through the voicemail script aloud to myself) and skim through large chunks of the page. On my first day, Tatiana had made it sound like I would be doing more than just phone calls: I’d help with inventory, mailings, and whatever else needed to be done. Unfortunately, it became clear that I would be doing phone calls, phone calls, and more phone calls. During my short tenure, there was one day when Tatiana had me spend half an hour rearranging her lipstick cabinet. I was almost enjoying myself when she screeched, “Enough! Time to get back to the phone.”

It took me about two shifts to decide that I needed to quit this job. I felt like such a slimeball trying to convince these women that they’d “won” something. Many of them reacted with mild confusion: “I never entered a drawing for anything.” I did have some swear at me, and I did book an appointment or two – but I definitely didn’t feel good about it. I know, it’s just Mary Kay: you actually can go to one of those facials and not have to buy anything. Even so, attempting to coerce unsuspecting women into the hands of Tatiana was not worth the eight dollars an hour.

I don’t remember how many shifts I completed for Tatiana: it couldn’t have been more than four. At the end of the week, she asked me when I could come in again. I told her I had a busy schedule (which was true) and that I’d get back to her. I never did. I know that it would’ve been the grown-up thing to just quit right then and there, but she was a lot bigger and scarier than me. If you were trapped in the house of a terrifying Russian woman with a temper (I often would hear her screaming at her husband while I made my phone calls), you’d cop out, too.

So that’s the story of my short-lived job as a Mary Kay cold-caller. I hope you gathered two things from this story: 1.) if you’re getting married, read the fine print, and 2.) never trust Craigslist. One of these times, I’ll tell you about my other two Minneapolis Craigslist jobs. In the meantime, if someone calls you and tells you you’ve won a free facial, hang up immediately.

top ten Tuesday: ten songs for ten situations.

I don’t know about you, but I get a ton of songs stuck in my head. Every single morning, I wake up with some tune rattling around in my brain, and the only way to get rid of it is NPR.

It’s not just the mornings, though. I have songs stuck in my head all day, every day. I feel like a defective radio station. Many of these songs get stuck in my head at random; I haven’t heard some of them for years. Out of the blue, I’ll wake up one morning with some N’Sync song floating through my head. Who knows where that came from (frankly, in cases like that, I don’t WANT to know). However, there are a number of songs that pop up more often than others, and always in specific situations. Call them the Billboard Top 40 of my subconscious. These ten are the most frequent, probably because I find myself in triggering situations more often. Good luck not getting them stuck in YOUR head, as well.

The Rolling Stones: “She’s So Cold”

situation: when I get hit on at work

This is my favorite Rolling Stones song of all time: it’s so upbeat, and the lyrics are really funny. It’s about a man who is in love with a woman, but she won’t give him the time of day. My current job (and the job before it) is in public service. As a young, decent-looking person, I hear all sorts of comments. I’ve been asked for my phone number, told that my shoes were “hot,” and I’ve heard remarks like “I like your eyes.” Keep in mind, this is ALL in a professional setting, so it’s wildly inappropriate. So what am I supposed to do? Almost always, I simply ignore the commentator and go about my day, and “She’s So Cold” immediately pops into my head. Sure, I’m being cold, but it’s really the best thing to do. I don’t always ignore the statements, though: one time, I was actually asked on a date. I answered with a flat “no.” Stone, stone cold.

The Animaniacs: “50 States and Their Capitals”

Situation: traveling through state capitals

I honestly would not know all my state capitals if it were not for this song.  It’s sung to the tune of “Turkey in the Straw,” so it’s not only educational, but catchy as well. The Animaniacs are clearly genius. Every time I get near a state capital, I can’t help but think of this song. I once spent a week in Hartford once, and I couldn’t help think “Hartford in Connecticut, so pretty in the fall,” as that is the line in the song. Other state capitals that I have visited include Baton Rouge, Pierre, St Paul, Denver, Phoenix, Washington DC, and Jackson, and each and every time I visited one, I couldn’t help but think of The Animaniacs.

Commander Cody: “Hot Rod Lincoln”

Situation: riding in my parents’ Lincoln

“Hot Rod Lincoln” is about, you guessed it, a hot rod Lincoln. The guy races a Cadillac and wins, but ends up in jail for his efforts. My parents drive a Lincoln – it’s no hot rod, but it does ok. Whenever dad passes someone, he’ll hear the engine rev and say, “Come on, Lincoln!” (He has said this to all his cars; this is his first Lincoln, so it was usually “come on, Ford!”) That causes me to think immediately of the opening line of the song (especially if Dad is speeding): “You’re going to drive me to drinkin if you don’t stop driving that hot rod Lincoln.” I think I just enjoy being able to rhyme “drinkin” with “Lincoln.”

Queen: “Bicycle Race”

Situation: riding my bike or wearing my bicycle necklace

Spring is just around the corner, so that means it’s time to pump up my bike tires and hit the streets of Sioux Falls. I rarely rode my bike in Minneapolis; my neighborhood had incredibly narrow streets and no bike lanes. Riding on the sidewalks is illegal, so you were doomed to the street, which meant you were pretty much asking to get run over. Minneapolis did have some wonderful bike trails; I will give it that. My new Sioux Falls neighborhood has wider streets, and the bike trails aren’t too far away. Riding my bike is always accompanied by “Bicycle Race” stuck in my head. I get this same song in my head whenever I wear my penny-farthing necklace (which, by the way, is awesome).

Depeche Mode: “Enjoy the Silence”

Situation: left alone in my office

This is a fairly new situation, since I have never before worked somewhere that can get so quiet. Every now and again, I end up being the only one in my office area. As I work in a library, things are characteristically quiet already. When I’m left alone in the office, the silence is almost deafening. The phones rarely ring, and I’m far enough away from the rest of the offices that their noise doesn’t carry over. The only sounds are the quiet hum of the computers and my own typing. Though I don’t particularly enjoy the silence, this song gets into my head just the same. If only I could turn on the radio.

Elvis Presley: “Cold Kentucky Rain”

Situation: rainy road trips through small towns

Though I have never been to Kentucky, I have been in the cold rain. I’ll forever remember the day my friend Sarah introduced me to this song. We were sitting on the porch at my house, eating white chocolate pudding (yes, that is a thing), and it began to rain. Sarah started to sing the chorus of this sing, and she was stunned when I said I’d never heard it. We looked it up on the internet, and sure enough, it was a great song. I now think of it every time I’m driving through small towns in the rain (which, when I lived in Minneapolis and would drive home to visit my parents, was quite often).

Rubberbandits: “Horse Outside”

Situation: seeing a Honda Civic

This song is HILARIOUS. No, really. It’s about a guy who wants to hook up with a bridesmaid at a wedding, and she has a number of other offers from guys with mediocre cars: a Mitsubishi, a Honda, and a Subaru. When she asks our hero why she should go with him instead of the guys with the cars, he sings, “F**k your Honda Civic, I’ve a horse outside.” The song itself is wonderful, but it’s really the video that makes it great. I don’t know why the singers have plastic bags over their heads, but no matter: just watch the goofy dances they do. If you don’t mind a little profanity, I highly recommend you watch this video. So now, every time I see a Honda Civic, I think of that particular line in the song… especially if said Honda Civic cuts me off.

Kelly (aka some guy named Liam): “Shoes”

Situation: buying shoes (I bet you never would’ve guessed)

I don’t remember when I first heard this song, but I thought it was hysterical. The guy in the wig, the nasally voice, the absurd shoe lyrics… it all adds up to Internet gold. I don’t even have to be shopping for shoes, and I’ll get this song in my head. Just walking past a Payless is enough to get it started. It gets even better when I’m in a shoe store with someone who knows the song. We can go through the rows, stating, “These shoes rule. These shoes SUCK.” And really, is there a better way to classify shoes? I don’t think so.

Ritchie Valens: “Come On, Let’s Go”

Situation: on the verge of being late

I have never been the most punctual person in the world. I’m not usually late, but I’m not usually early, either. I have my morning schedule timed to near perfection. I know exactly how long it will take me to get ready in the morning, so I don’t get up a minute earlier. Every now and again, though, something won’t go quite right: there’s no hot water, my outfit looks dorky, or there’s a traffic jam on the way to work. A wrench is thrown into my plans, and I am no longer timed to the minute. Whenever this happens, Ritchie Valens comes sneaking into my head. This song is not about being late, but to me, it always will be.

The Rolling Stones: “Start Me Up”

Situation: starting my car in the winter

Winter can be a trying time here in the Midwest. We’re usually stuck with six months of snow and ice, and that means scraping windows and trying to persuade your car to start in negative temperatures. We got lucky this year; there was hardly any snow, and it seems like spring has arrived early. However, we’re normally wading through mounds of snow, trying to chip the half-inch of solid ice off of our windshields. And of course, to avoid completely destroying your car (and to expedite the ice removal process), you need to let it warm up for a bit. Whenever I’d have to start my car in the mornings, I would inevitably get “Start Me Up” stuck in my head. Thankfully, my car was always willing to start up on cold winter mornings. I can’t say as much for me.

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So those are the top ten songs I get stuck in my head (and the specific situations that go with them). And to think, I didn’t even go into the name songs (example: “Gloria” by the Doors… of course, I think of it every time I encounter someone named Gloria). Stay tuned (pun intended) for next week’s exhilarating story!

a cardboard boat story.

If your high school classes were anything like mine, you spent a lot of time doing projects. I wrote poetry for English class (poetry is the very loosest sense of the word –  mine consisted mostly of goofy rhymes like “spectacular” and “vernacular”), reproduced Starry Night for art class, and created an informative poster about the rhombus for geometry class. However, no project of mine will quite live up to the infamy that was the physics cardboard boat.

When I was a junior, I (along with a handful of other people) was more or less forced into physics because there were too many people in chemistry class. The juniors were required to take some sort of science course that year, and physics and chemistry were the only options. Given the meager choices, almost everyone signed up for chemistry, including me. The classroom was packed beyond capacity, so the principal had to convince some people to switch to physics. She picked out a few of us and took us aside to give us her pitch. “Oh, you wouldn’t enjoy chemistry anyway,” she said. “You’re all too smart for that. Physics will be right up your alley. It will be much more intellectually challenging. It’s much more appropriate for people as smart as you.” I am not making this up. Despite the thinly-veiled manipulation, a number of us reluctantly agreed to switch into physics class.

On the first day of class, I immediately began questioning my decision. The first thing our teacher did was give us an assignment: a team of three would have to build a boat out of cardboard and duct tape. Not only would we have to build this contraption, but it would have to float… while holding the entire team. NOT ONLY would we have to build it and make it seaworthy, we would have to race the other teams across the Arlington swimming pool.

My team consisted of my friend Allison and one other girl. Allison and I took the project head-on: our first move was, of course, to acquire some cardboard. As I’ve mentioned before, Brookings is the go-to place for Arlingtonites, so that’s where Allison and I began. Our first stop was a downtown furniture store, which ended up being incredibly lucrative (“lucrative” in the cardboard sense, anyway). The furniture we spoke to was certainly amused, and he kindly offered up as many boxes as our little hearts desired. He even gave us permission to pull the car into the alley behind the store so it would be easier to get at them.

As Allison and I were walking back to the car to move it into the alley, we were met by an old bearded man on a bike. He was pulling a little wagon full of cans behind him. The bearded man stopped his bike and said, "Hi girls." Being polite Midwesterners, Allison and I returned is greeting. He said cheerfully, "You know, I'm going to have to kill you sometime." Then, he calmly rode away. Our project was clearly off to a great start.

Allison and I loaded up the car with cardboard and headed back to Arlington, and construction on the boat began the very next day. The three of us congregated in Allison’s backyard and did the token “physics” part of the project (buoyancy calculations, etc). It took us the entire evening to build the body, and we spent the next evening duct-taping and waterproofing to the very best of our abilities.

Partway through our waterproofing, we realized that we’d need a way to propel our boat from point A to point B. Since cardboard and duct tape were the only permitted materials, the best idea we could come up with was to use two carpet tubes as gondolas. One small problem: we had no carpet tubes. Fortunately for us, it was a Thursday: downtown stores in Brookings stay open late on Thursdays. We called around, and sure enough, we found a furniture store in Brookings that was more than happy to donate their carpet tubes to a worthy cause.

Allison and I traveled to Brookings to retrieve our carpet tube (our third member had volunteered to stay behind and continue covering the boat in duct tape). Upon arrival at the furniture store, we were handed a fourteen-foot carpet tube! Thankfully, we had the foresight to bring along a hacksaw – you never know when you’ll need one. Alas, we did NOT have the foresight to bring along a tape measure, so our hacksawed carpet tube was a bit uneven. Oh well – we had our gondolas!

After picking up a final emergency roll of duct tape, we returned to Arlington to find that our third team member had gone home. Why? She had run out of tape. Good thing we’d picked up that last roll. Allison and I finished taping the boat by flashlight. Finally, our ship was complete.

Just in time, too: the very next day was race day. Allison’s dad delivered the boat to the school, and I showed up with a Jolly Roger flag taped to a yard stick. Our boat was christened the H.M.S. Minnow, as we were certain that she’d be lost by the end of the day. The race took place at the Arlington Pool shortly after lunch. It was a gorgeous early fall day, and some of the race participants had even opted to wear swimming suits. Our team did not: we put more faith in the Minnow than we should have.

We arrived at the pool, carrying our boats, to be met with a surprise: the ENTIRE school was there to watch us sink or swim. Not only that, but most of the town of Arlington was there, too (including my parents and a couple of cousins). Our physics teacher had even arranged for the pep band to play. It was quite an event.

With a wave of a red flag, the race began. It was time to set sail. Allison gingerly stepped in the front, but our third member (who was to be the last person in, so she was in charge of hanging onto the boat from the side of the pool) wasn’t hanging on tight enough. The Minnow began to escape. Allison couldn’t reach the gondola pole that we extended from the side of the pool, so the only option was for the two of us to jump in. (The only way to get a good grade on this project was for the entire team to be in the boat when it touched the other side.) So in we went. By the time we caught up to the boat, Allison was nearly to the finish line. I climbed in the boat easily, but our third member wasn’t so sure. Frustrated, Allison and I began to actually yell at her – after all that work, we weren’t about to lose out on an A now! Finally, our soggy team member leapt into the boat… but her leap wasn’t good enough. She crushed an entire side of the boat in her attempt to get in. After all that, though, we made it across the pool with all three members in the boat.

We slogged out of the pool, soaked to the very bone. The Minnow was reduced to a sopping pile of cardboard and duct tape, but she had served us well. We didn’t win the race that day, but that’s not what mattered. I could pretend like the take-away lesson from this project was that physics can be fun and that you can accomplish all sorts of things if you put your mind to it, but that wasn’t it. I can’t say I actually learned anything that day… but any day that involves spending half your school day in a swimming pool racing with cardboard boats is ok in my book.

Here we are, right before the race. Not shown: shipwreck.

(P.S. – We totally got an A.) 

let's talk about fourth grade.

Everybody goes through an awkward phase in elementary school. Some would argue that all of elementary school (and for many, all of junior high) is an awkward phase. While that may be true, in my particular experience, one grade outshines them all in pure, unadulterated awkward: fourth grade.

I began the fourth grade in 1996 when I was nine years old. It was a weird time for me: I was on the verge of getting braces, and I had recently discovered that there was a life outside of The Lion King. The pressure was on to start being “cool,” and I had no idea where to begin. Clearly, neither did the rest of my classmates: we took all our cues from Clueless. Sure, we were nine-year-old Midwesterners comparing ourselves to teenage Californians with rich parents, but to our little fourth grade selves, it didn’t matter. We picked up two major things from Clueless: sassy terminology and feather pens.

Simpler times.

Before Clueless, none of us had been exposed to the phrases “as if” or “whatever.” After Clueless, hardly a sentence was uttered without containing one or both. I’m not even sure we knew what “as if” meant. No matter: we still used “as if” with gusto. We scrawled it on our notebooks along with that weird “smile” made out of bubble letters.

And oh, the feather pens. They were one of the strangest trends to ever hit Arlington Elementary School. A feather pen is exactly what it sounds like: a pen with a little marabou pouf on the end. For a good portion of fourth grade, I wanted nothing more than a feather pen. However, my lack of income made that a problem. You could only get feather pens in one place within a 30-mile radius of my house, and that was at Maurices in Brookings. Every time I visited my grandma in Brookings, I begged her to take me there. Maurices was THE store: if you got your clothes from Maurices, you were SOMEBODY (according to Arlington Elementary standards). I would gaze longingly at the feather pen display, wanting terribly to have one of my very own. Oddly enough, I never thought to actually TELL anyone that I wanted a feather pen. I’m pretty sure they were five dollars, and had she known, my grandma certainly would’ve purchased one for me. I have no idea how I thought I would get a feather pen without anyone being aware of my desire for one. ESP, probably.

For my tenth birthday, I had a sleepover at my house. We had pizza and listened to “MMMBop” on repeat: ten-year-old heaven. The time came, as it usually does when birthdays are involved, to open presents. When I saw a small cylindrical package, I immediately knew what was in it. I don’t remember who gave it to me, but in the package was a lime green feather pen. My life was complete.

Yes, after nearly fifteen years, I managed to find
my old feather pens. The middle one is, obviously, the
lime green birthday pen. The other two were purchased
by me with my very first Maurices gift card.
Life was good.

Lime green was THE color of 1996/1997. I have no idea why: it just was. Everything had to be lime green. When my grandma took me back-to-school shopping, I got her to buy me a pair of lime green overall shorts, a t-shirt with lime green flowers along the neck, and a pair of lime green Keds: you’d better believe I wore them all at once and ALL the time. 

Sadly, this is real.

When I got braces, my first set of rubber bands was lime green. I begged my parents to allow me to paint my room lime green (believe it or not, they declined). Anything and everything that could be lime green, was.

Along with the Clueless vernacular, a number of 1960s catchphrases made a bizarre comeback amongst the fourth grade crowd. We began to call things “groovy” and doodled little peace signs on our homework. Each and every one of us had grand plans to purchase a Volkswagen Beetle as soon as we had our learner’s permits. Yin yang signs were also big, even though I’m fairly certain no one knew what they meant: we just knew that they were easy to draw.

Looking back on the fourth grade, it’s almost pitiful. I thought I was the epitome of cool with my non-ironic John Lennon glasses and my lime green wardrobe. At that age, I was astonishingly easy to please. It only took a ridiculous feather pen to make me happy for months on end. Ah, simpler times. Now, instead of a feather pen I can’t live without, my tastes have gotten a little more expensive. I’m fairly certain I can’t live without a new car. However, unlike my desire for a feather pen, I have made my desire for a new car well known amongst my family and friends. Something tells me they stopped listening a long time ago, so maybe I will have to revert to the simple pleasures of my youth to fill the void (sigh). If only I could find my Tamagotchi…

a Denver/homeless guy story.

The summer after I graduated from college, I had big plans. I was going to move to Denver and begin my very first museum internship. I was thrilled: for the first time in my life, I was going to live in a metropolitan area. The biggest city I’d lived in until that point was Morris, Minnesota: boasting a population of just over 5,000. It was big enough for a McDonald’s, but not much else. I grew up in a town of less than one thousand people, so Morris itself was something different for me. They had a 24-hour grocery store, for crying out loud.

I graduated with degrees in English and Art History, so obviously, my job prospects were slim. So I set out to do what so many Art History majors have done before me: gain experience through an unpaid internship. I thought it sounded great. I could hang out in the museum and learn what happened behind the scenes, AND I got to live in the mountains! My aunt and uncle who lived there were kind enough to put me up for the summer, so I didn’t have to worry about trying to find an apartment. Sure, the whole not getting paid thing was kind of a drag, but finding a part-time job would be easy as pie, right?

Wrong. I graduated in May 2009, and the economy was in the dumps. When I arrived in Denver, I expected to have a job within a week; two weeks tops. I was applying at restaurants, stores, you name it: nothing. I was astonished. I had never had to REALLY search for a job before: I had only worked in smaller towns where it wasn’t nearly as difficult to land a part-time job. In Denver, I was finding it next to impossible.

For the first time in years, I was unemployed. I had worked summers in high school and all throughout college, and here I was: a college graduate who was jobless in Denver. I was used to living on a tight budget: that was probably one of the most useful things I learned in college. However, I was NOT used to living on a budget with that involved no income. That was something new.

My internship was twenty hours a week in downtown Denver. 

My museum circa summer 2009. Pretty sweet, huh?

My aunt and uncle lived outside of Denver, so I took the bus into the city every day. This was my first experience with public transportation, and let me tell you, it was an eye-opener. The bus I rode was actually kind of fun. There were all sorts of regulars: there was the girl who dressed like she came straight out of 1992, and there was the guy who looked exactly like Buster Bluth. 

There was also the guy who sat down next to me and offered me Russian interpretation services.

Since my internship was only twenty hours a week, I had to find something else to fill my time… preferably, something free. I couldn’t get a library card without a.) becoming a permanent resident of Denver, or b.) paying a rather large fee, so that was out of the question. I did my fair share of exploring downtown, but there’s only so much you can do there for free. I eventually began borrowing books from my aunt and uncle and settling in the park outside the capital building. 

The view from the tippy-top of the museum.
The park in question can be seen on the left.

This was the perfect activity. It was peaceful, and summertime in the mountains is a wonderful time of year. I had it made… that is, until the homeless people noticed me.

One afternoon, I was sitting quietly on a park bench, reading a collection of short stories. Suddenly, I heard someone approach from behind me. Unnerving, yes, but I figured it would be fine. It was daylight, after all. “Hey,” slurred a voice from behind me. “Whatcha reading?” I ignored the voice, hoping it would just go away. Of course, that never works. A middle-aged, dirty man emerged from behind the bench and sat down next to me. The smell of body odor and cheap alcohol was overwhelming. Once again, I tried to ignore my new friend, hoping he’d pick up on the hint. Surprise surprise, he didn’t.

When Homeless Drunk Guy realized he couldn’t get my attention from the side, he tried a new strategy. He came and squatted down directly in front of me. “HEY,” he said, louder this time. As I was all alone in the park with this guy, I decided it was in my best interest not to make him angry. So this time, I looked up from my book. “Hey,” he said again. I was beginning to think that “hey” was the only thing he was going to say to me. I was wrong. “I like your blue eyes. You know… you look like a couple of my ex-wives,” he said. How lucky for me.

“So… you like to read, eh?” Homeless Drunk Guy was not giving up. He reclaimed his place on the bench. “Do you like to read the Bible? What do you know about the Bible?” As uncomfortable as this encounter was making me, I have to admit that I was curious to see where it was going. “I know enough about it,” I said, keeping my eyes in my book. “Oh?” he responded, seeming surprised. “Do you remember the part where… uh… the guy did that one thing, and there was fire? Or something. Anyway, do you think I’ll go to heaven?” Clearly, this conversation was taking a turn for the weird. It was time for me to end it.

I stood up and gave him some excuse about being late for a meeting. Lucky for me, homeless drunk guys are easy to fool. “But,” he spluttered, “I don’t know your name! Pleeeeeeease tell me your name.” I told him that my name was Shirley, which he seemed happy with. “Shirley, how old are you?” I was 22 years old at the time, but I smiled sweetly and told him that I was 16, hoping that this would deter him from continuing to hit on me. Once again, I was wrong. “Shirley, would you ever marry a guy like me?” Homeless Drunk Guy implored. I turned and walked away. “Shirley, wait!” he called. “Marry me!” Thankfully, he was drunk, so he couldn’t come after me very quickly. I power-walked my way out of the park and immediately called my dad: just in case Homeless Drunk Guy did catch up with me, I wanted somebody to know what to tell the police.

Dad, of course, was less than pleased to hear this story. He asked me if I would please stop hanging out in that downtown park, and I hastily agreed. Thankfully, it wasn’t too much later that I got a part-time job, so my free time all but evaporated. Honestly, I was fine with it.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t my last uncomfortable encounter that summer in downtown Denver. The museum offices were located several blocks away from the museum itself, so you had to walk through that same park to get from Point A to Point B. Walking that way, I heard all sorts of propositions, most of them beginning with “hey baby.” Not that I’m any great beauty, but the homeless population of Denver seemed to think that I was Venus herself. Maybe they could tell that I was an out-of-towner.

My poor parents heard these stories all the time. Being nearly 700 miles away, there wasn’t much they could do about it. I rode with my aunt and uncle back to South Dakota for a quick visit in early July, and my parents were relieved to see that I was (more or less) in one piece. Mom did have something to send back with me, though: a fake engagement ring. 

I'm not sure WHY my mom had a fake engagement
ring, but it was rather helpful.

She asked me to wear it when I was walking downtown; anything to deter the romantic advances of the park folk. We even came up with a fake fiancé: he would be a body builder with anger issues who was extremely jealous. I like to think that his name was Jean-Claude.

You probably assumed that I made it out of Denver alive. Indeed I did, but certainly wiser because of it. After Denver came New Orleans, which was full of unexpected adventures of its own. That Christmas, my parents put Mace in my stocking. My next move was to Minneapolis, which was considerably less interesting (story-wise) than my other two internship cities. And now, here I am in Sioux Falls. I have yet to see how that turns out. I do still have my fake engagement ring, though. You never know when you’re going to need one of those.

a sparkly poetry story.

Once upon a time, I was a freshman in college. A great many things happened during my freshman year: I made new friends, learned that I wasn’t meant to be a psychology major, and found out what it was like to have to buy my own groceries. I did a lot of things that year, some memorable, some not so much. There is one thing I will never forget about my freshman year, and it’s not even something I did: for this memory, I can thank my dad.

I’d better start at the top. I signed up for college band when I registered for classes the summer before I began college. I had my doubts, but it fit perfectly into my schedule, and a little dorky part of me knew I’d miss playing my horn. Turns out it was the best decision I could’ve made. I played some truly strange music and met the greatest people. Concert band led to jazz band, where I met even more great people and got to go to New Orleans. This story, though, is about the final concert of my freshman year.

Our concert band director was a crazy guy. He was only around for my freshman year, but he certainly made an impression. He had this grand idea for the last concert of the year: one of the pieces was going to be a multimedia performance. Yes: multimedia. Keep in mind that this is a liberal arts college that I’m talking about. We were performing a piece called “Sparkle” that was composed by a UMM alumnus. This concert would be the world premiere of “Sparkle,” and our director wanted to draw a crowd. He was going to bring in painters and dancers; he was going to create a slideshow with photos that sparkled, and he was planning on handing out paper and pencils to the audience so they could write “Sparkle”-inspired poetry. It was very liberal arts of our director, and he was sure it would be a hit.

We spent the entire week before the concert rehearsing in the concert hall. It wasn’t until the last day or two, though, that the dancers were brought in. The dancers were instructed to do interpretive dances in the concert hall’s walkways. I can’t speak for my fellow musicians, but I found myself incredibly distracted. I wanted to see what “Sparkle” would look like as a dance, and the dancers mostly just looked uncomfortable. As for the slideshow and the painters, we weren’t going to rehearse with them. The slideshow screen would hover above our heads, so as long as nobody stood up, that would be fine. 

I have no idea what the director put in the
"Sparkle" slideshow, but I'd like to think
that this picture was involved.

The artists, however, were not invited to the rehearsals. The director didn’t want the painters to hear “Sparkle” ahead of time: they were supposed to create paintings based on their initial reaction to the music.

My parents had been incredibly faithful concert attendees. My mom actually knew my concert schedule better than I did. When I called to tell them about this concert, I hesitantly mentioned the multimedia portion. I didn’t want them to come all the way to the concert without knowing what to expect. My mom and my sister couldn’t attend this concert; Mom was chaperoning Darrah’s high school band trip to St Louis. Dad planned on coming, as did my brother Mitch. They also planned to bring along our neighbors: my friend Sarah, her brother Dylan, and their mom, Sharon.

Sarah and me after the concert. See how happy we are
that it was finally over?!

The day of the concert arrived, and I spotted my cheering section in no time. The first half of the concert was fairly normal; I don’t remember what we played, but it certainly paled in comparison to the freak show that was the second half. As the painters were setting up their easels and the dancers were taking their places, our director gave his spiel about what was going on. I could see the befuddled looks on the faces of the concert-goers; clearly, not too many of my fellow performers had warned their families beforehand. Out front with the programs, there had been a basket of paper and pencils free for the taking. The director then explained what these were for: he wanted the audience to write poems based on “Sparkle.” They were supposed to let the music inspire them. The audience members’ eyebrows rose even higher. I’m certain they were wondering if they could sneak out without anyone noticing.

“Sparkle” began, and the dancers gyrated in the walkways. They were dressed in black and had colorful scarves: it was the closest to avant-garde they could get, apparently. We couldn’t see what the painters were doing; their artwork faced the audience. I could, however, see my dad, and he was writing something. I figured that he and Mitch were just passing notes back and forth about how hokey this whole concert was. I was in for a major surprise.

“Sparkle” finally ended, much to our relief and the relief of the concert attendees. “Now,” said the director, turning to face the audience. “Does anyone have a poem they’d like to share?” To my utter horror, I saw my dad look over one shoulder, than the other. It hit me: he had a poem to read. When Dad saw that there was no one clamoring to read their poem, he stood up to read his poem. I thought I was fairly safe; not too many of my bandmates knew that this guy was my dad. He began his poem:

“Five of us came from SD 

(my thought: “Well, there could be others from South Dakota…”)

To see my daughter, Calla B. 

(every single person in the band turned to look at me. Busted.)

She really makes her father beam

Now, if only the Twins had a team!”

Before he sat down, Dad followed with his alternate ending:

“She’s just about as good as she can get

If only she played the trumpet!”

The concert band members actually applauded, and the audience was also quite appreciative: any poem that mentions the Twins is ok in their book. The director, though, was not quite as amused. He was looking for something a little more “sparkly.” He said, “Uh… thanks. Anyone else…?” There was silence: how could anyone follow my dad’s poetic work of art?! Finally, someone (the director’s wife) did stand up and read a poem consisting entirely of adjectives.

Mercifully, the concert ended there. As soon as we were off the stage, the other band members clamored to talk to me. “Calla, that was your DAD?! He’s AWESOME!” was the consensus. Many of the band members (and the audience members, come to think of it) actually sought out my dad to introduce themselves and tell them how great his poem was. James (the boyfriend, but not at the time) played trumpet in the band, and his parents had come to the concert. I’d met them once before, but they had never met my dad. After the concert, James’s parents (who had been sitting right in front of Dad) introduced themselves to Dad, saying, “We KNEW there was a reason we liked your daughter!”

For the next three years of my college career, I remained in at least one band: jazz or concert (and sometimes both). At any performance, there was always someone who said, “Calla, remember that time your dad wrote that poem? That was the best concert EVER.” There were a few prospective students in the audience that day, and they eventually came to Morris and joined the band. They would hear someone mention that poem and say, “Calla, that was YOUR dad?! That was amazing!”

And that, my friends, is how my dad became better known at my college than I was. To this very day, my college friends will mention that concert fondly. Without my dad, it would’ve just been some weird liberal arts conceptual mumbo-jumbo, but he brought it back to where everyone wanted it to be: Twins Territory, that is!

Never forget it.

really pathetic laundry stories.

I am one of the least domestic people you will ever meet. Cooking? Only if it involves a microwave. Ironing? The only time I’ve ironed anything was the time I made goofy t-shirts for Talk Like a Pirate Day. Vacuuming? Only if I can’t figure out a good reason to put it off (and I usually can). Don’t ask me to help you scrapbook, because I’ll just do more harm than good. God forbid anyone asks me to plan a bridal/baby shower, because I will most likely buy a pizza and call it a day. No, I never have been and never will be good at those kinds of things.

A prime example of my domestic ineptitude would be my history with laundry. When I was a kid, Mom did the laundry, and the most I had to do was gather it from my siblings’ and my rooms. When I was a child, Mom asked me to put the clothes in the washing machine. I readily agreed, and I carted the laundry with me to the basement. Mom loves to tell the story about how I came upstairs a few minutes later and bewilderedly asked her which one was the washing machine. That was more or less the end of my laundry career. Every now and again, if Mom was really desperate for help, she’d ask me to sort the laundry into lights and darks. I even struggled with that. That green shirt could be a light OR a dark, and I wasn’t about to be the one who screwed up the laundry. And don’t even get me started on clothes with multiple colors: stripes were the worst.

It should be no surprise, then, as I grew older and started buying my own clothes, I paid close attention to the labels. Not labels as in brands: labels as in washing instructions. I avoided anything and everything that said “hand wash” or, even worse, “dry clean only.” If my clothes were wrinkly, oh well: rather than iron them, I would wear the wrinkly clothes and hope that no one noticed.

My laundry troubles only grew when I went to college and discovered that I now had to PAY to wash my clothes! I learned to hoard quarters and ration clothes carefully: you saved your best clothes for the weekends and wore all the other junk during the week. You wouldn’t want to be caught in something less than wonderful at the local skeezy house party! Like any other college student, I brought along loads of laundry every time I came to visit my parents. I had never realized what a luxury it was: I didn’t have to pay to wash my clothes there, and I didn’t have to babysit my laundry for fear someone would remove it prematurely from the washing machine so they themselves could take over. The college laundry room was a brutal place.

The following year, the campus did away with the coin-operated machines and laundry was free! What a wonderful year that was. I washed my clothes on a regular person schedule of once a week, as opposed to the college person schedule of “whenever I can find enough quarters” or the more dire “whenever I run out of underwear.” You still had to watch your laundry in case someone snaked your machine, but it wasn’t nearly as painful since it was free. That was definitely the best of my sophomore year of college.

During my junior and senior years, I lived off-campus in a house with a number of my friends. We had a washer and dryer in the basement, so I felt as though I could continue washing my clothes whenever I darn well pleased. And here, I wouldn’t have to sit and watch my clothes! How wonderful! Or so I thought…

It didn’t take long before I realized that something wasn’t quite right with the dryer. The straps on some of my tank tops looked a little singed. Odd, indeed. I kept on washing and drying my clothes like I always did, until the day that the tank top straps were practically burned in half. Some of my other clothes had rusty-looking streaks across them… what on earth was the problem?! I asked my other roommates if they’d had the same problem, and they confirmed that the dryer was destroying their clothes, as well. The clothes would get caught somewhere in the dryer, and it would proceed to BURN them. I stopped using the Dryer from Hell immediately and began dragging my laundry to my parents’ house again.

The only thing that the dryer didn’t ruin was jeans. Since the material was so much thicker than all of my other wimpy college clothes, the Hell Dryer was no match for denim. I could continue to dry my jeans, but nothing else. One day, I decide to wash my winter coat with my jeans. It was thick; it could certainly withstand the wrath of the Hell Dryer. So I tossed my red coat in the washing machine with several pairs of jeans. My red wool coat. I bet you know where this is going.

When I pulled my clothes out of the washing machine, my coat looked slightly smaller, and all my jeans had a pink tint. Yes. Because I’m an idiot, I dyed my jeans pink. I immediately called my mom to find out how to fix it. After she stopped laughing, she told me that I was more or less out of luck. I could try washing them again (without the red coat), which I did. Sadly, the second time through the wash did nothing: I was stuck with a whole bunch of purply-colored jeans.

My laundry misadventures continued into my basement apartment in Plymouth, Minnesota. James and I lived in a converted garage underneath someone’s house (thanks, Craigslist!), so we had no washer and dryer. We were banished to, horror of horrors, the laundromat, which is just about my least favorite place on earth. James and I went to the cheapest place we could find, and unfortunately, “cheap” and “scary” go hand-in-hand in laundromat world. Whenever the time came to do laundry, we brought along books and tried not to make eye contact with anybody.

Never trust a place with dryers bigger than you.

One evening, I was in dire need of clean pairs of jeans. James wasn’t getting home until late, and there was no way I was going to the creepy laundromat by myself. Like any logically challenged individual, I decided that I was going to wash my jeans in the shower. The shower in question had no bathtub attached… it was just a shower. You can imagine how well this turned out. I all but flooded the bathroom trying to get my jeans rinsed out. Then, there was the question of how to dry them. I squeezed all the water I could out of said jeans, but they were still sopping wet and weighed about a ton. Since I am brilliant, I thought it would be best to hang the jeans on outside. Did I mention that it was February? James came home to find three pairs of frozen jean-cicles draped on the railing. I sheepishly explained my seemingly ingenious plan, and I thought James was going to suffocate; he was laughing so hard. Turns out I’m good at making people laugh when it comes to my laundry ideas.

And now, here I am, living in my lovely Sioux Falls apartment and STILL bringing laundry home to my parents. When will I grow out of that? Not until I have a washer and dryer of my very own. A washer, I might add, that gets all the soap out of the clothes (unlike the washer in Minneapolis) and a dryer that doesn’t burn anything (Morris dryer) or leave nasty little lint particles all over your partially-dried clothing (Sioux Falls dryer). Is that really too much to ask? It’s not for lack of effort that I reverted to my parents’ laundry room; I just have high expectations that none of my laundry facilities have been able to meet. Plus, I never have enough quarters.