I was forced into child labor at an early age. I blame my parents. Denied more traditional outlets for pre pre-teen angst like vodka, cocaine, leather & rubber fetish porn, etc. I submitted readily to the opening chords of gag & novelty addiction’s sweetly seductive siren song. Every boy needs a hobby and while some eight-year olds on my street dabbled with classics like spray-painting “eat me” on stray cats, I opted for the exciting cosmopolitan lifestyle of mail order shopping. Unfortunately this required money, rather elusive stuff for most grade-schoolers.
The Johnson Smith Company’s gag pushers sunk their claws deep into my budding psyche with fresh musty-sweet scented newsprint catalogs beckoning me with “hours of fun!”, urging me to “fool all my friends!” and “get even with my teachers!” Enraptured by the dulcet tones of my first whoopee cushion I tripped on paradisiacal visions of “so lifelike” severed fingers, rivers of fake vomit and dog poo, a land of milk and honey where Billy Bob hillbilly teeth grew on trees, where shy third-graders armed with hand buzzers and dribble glasses miraculously transformed themselves into “life of the party” demigods.
I needed a fix every month or two but gags are hard to come by when you’re an ungainfully unemployed grade-schooler. Allowance? A shiny quarter every week. Sure, you couldn’t buy a snot off the homeless for twenty-five cents these days but back then it could keep a budding life-of-the-party in sneezing powder for weeks. But prying a quarter out of my dad’s iron-fisted clutches was no simple task for a small boy.
We usually played the allowance game on Saturdays at the local Mr. Steak during dad’s preferred “not-quite-dinner so lunch-menu-pricing is still in effect” time of day. Belly full and nerves steeled I’d broach the subject rather circuitously, ever wary of my dad’s suspicious sixth sense for conversations that risked thinning his wallet. A comment like “Well what do you know about that! There’s a quarter on that table, almost exactly like the kind my allowance is made of!” would inevitably lead to some version of “In my day a boy would haul 400 pounds of potatoes on his back through minefields riddled with rusty East German import razor blades, sodomize a herd of water buffalo and launder grandma’s babushka over a rock in an icy cold river in the dead of winter before securing a dollop of ‘So life like! Fool all your friends!’ fake dog poo from the Soviet Ministry of Gags & Novelties.”
My attention span would usually flee the scene half-way through the lecture, leaving me to stare longingly at the Norman Rockwell art calendar behind the cash register wishing that Santa might bring me a classic American “Fuck your quarter, boy! I’M EATING!” father. You know, like the one in the traditional “Christmas dinner with rosy-cheeked nuclear family with two gas-guzzlers and a sleigh in the garage and oooooh look at the adorable kitten under the tree who’ll drop the ‘me’ off her ‘meow’ when the boy drooling grisly bits of canned pumpkin pie experiments on her with grandma’s heirloom salad fork collection” painting we all remember so fondly from back in the day.
My initial bout with Acute Mail-Order Withdrawal Syndrome set in shortly after our neighbor, Mrs. Murie violated the seams of my pastel-blue vinyl whoopee cushion with her gigantomatasmical Midwestern corn-fed ass. Silent but deadly, to be sure. I desperately required an upgrade to the 100% Virgin Rubber Whoopee Cushion Deluxe. Or better yet, an entirely new gag. But a week or two of allowance wouldn’t do. “If you gimme a dollar I’ll mow the lawn,” I told my dad. “If you ever want to eat again you’ll mow the lawn for free, RIGHT NOW”, he replied.
I brainstormed amidst the eardrum-pummeling rumble and shin-assaulting barrage of shredded grass from our Montgomery Ward’s Gigantoburban Lawn Leveller. Beating up classmates for their lunch money sounded promising, but with only two kids in my stable of easily-intimidated underlings who wouldn’t piss themselves with laughter at my threats, both of them girls, the math didn’t quite add up. And school policy didn’t allow for much mingling with the pre-schoolers anyway. The Special Ed class tempted me in a way that only a veritable all-you-can-eat smorgasborg of easy prey can, but extorting quid off the only kids who’d hang out with me at recess bore long-term social costs I wasn’t prepared to pay. And most of them routinely lost their lunch money on the way to school anyway.
Mom’s old coats and handbags offered temporary respite from desperation. In some circles stealing from one’s mother might border on morally gray territory but the worldly crowd I ran with eloquently quoted convincing legal precedent: “Finders keepers, losers weepers.” Not to mention that this was 1974 and most of my mom’s change had expired anyway, the bulk of it dated 1972 and earlier. Eventually I rousted up a buck and rushed my order off to Messrs. Johnson and Smith, hardly able to sleep at night while visions of shiny new X-ray Vision glasses and Terri Williams’ (my third grade crush) underwear danced through my head.
Several eternities passed in antsy hovering about the mailbox while incessant harassment of The Mail Lady nearly caused premature unhingement of my favorite molars from their respective gums. “Is it here yet?! When’s it coming? How ‘bout now? Can’t you get a faster Jeep? My dad says you goobermint free-loaders prolly stoleded it and that he could shit a set of steel-belted Goodyear radials before you get something here on time. How old are you, like a hunnerd and infimmity? Old people shouldn’t wear shorts. I’m eight. Wanna’ see what I can do? Look! Is it here yet? How ‘bout now?”
The finally delivered wafer-thin envelope felt a bit light but who was I to argue with modern science? Perhaps the crack research and development team at the Johnson Smith Company had happened upon breakthrough X-Ray Vision glasses technology and sent me the prototype for New and Improved Ultra-Thin Super Stealth X-Ray Bifocals. My little chicken legs quivered in their wee cotton socks with anticipation. All this for only a dollar!
In the envelope, a single sheet of paper. “Dear Mr. Rostenko” Why are they writing to my dad? Am I in trouble, I thought?… “We are refunding your money due to a failure to meet our minimum order requirement of two dollars. Please note, AGAIN, that shipping and handling charges do not count toward the minimum order.“ Why is anyone handling my super-stealth prototype X-Ray Vision glasses and more importantly, where do you get off charging ME to handle MY glasses? Rifle through YOUR moms’ old coats and purses and get your own glasses, jerkoffs… “Enclosed please find a check for one dollar.” A check? What do I look like, a fucking banker? I’m eight years old. What am I supposed to do with a goddam check, you greedy capitalist swine shatterers-of-childhood-dreams sonsabitches? A pox on all your houses, merchants of misery. Which in eight-year-old-speak came out sounding remarkably akin to “Ummmm…mmkay.”
I had to find another way. Back in the days before any acne-pocked twenty-something dipstick skateboard punk could pull a multi-billion dollar internet company straight out of his ass, the traditional childhood route toward wage-slavedom was paved with newsprint. Unfortunately I hit the glass ceiling immediately as the Stewart brothers held an unyielding monopoly on Detroit News delivery. Delivering the left-leaning Detroit Free Press wasn’t an option as we routinely basted in a delicate paprika and lime juice marinade and grilled over hickory chips any stray liberal who might mistakenly venture onto our ultra-conservative block. And everyone knows that dead liberals are notorious for under-tipping.
I struck gold in the back of Boy’s Life magazine. The ad promised that an enterprising young man could make serious inroads to the American dream delivering “GRIT”, some sort of hillbilly newspaper for folks who canned vegetables I’d never heard of, frolicked suspiciously with sheep under the cover of darkness and hid moonshining operations from “goddam revenoooers” in remote areas devoid of monopolistic family newspaper delivery dynasties. The perfect vehicle: I could fund my gag habit and bankrupt the Stewart empire with good old American competition. Who wouldn’t prefer to read You and Your Farm Animal: 12 Romantic Ways To Bring Back the Sizzle instead of Murder Rate Tops Last Year’s Record; Mayor Young Organizes Parade, or Detroit: Not Just a Big Pile of Used Condoms and Dirty Syringes?
Alas, even the best laid plans are riddled with hurdles: I’d have to talk. For a kid saddled with a severe stutter and its attendant facial tics, head-bobbing and occasional foot stomping, the mere thought generally set my blue Converse sneakers afloat in a small puddle of warm urine. I got around it with a crayon and a paper plate inscribed “do yoo want 2 by grit?” Eventually I tired of hearing “Boy, did you smack your skinny head on a fat pile of retarded or sumthin’? Why would I want to buy any more goddam dirt when I’ve already got a lawn full of it?” and decided it was time for a career change.
Selling vegetable seeds door to door: that’d be my ticket to financial independence, also courtesy of the Boy’s Life classifieds. Mom was out of paper plates so I’d have to suck it up, open my mouth, and hope that a coherent sentence might emerge from the oral tempest of gurgles, tongue smacks, clicks and flying spittle. I practiced a good while in front of the mirror. “Hello neighbor! Could I interest you in some seeds for your vegetable garden? Why yes, as a matter of fact we DO have okra. Several var eye ta, varayat, vatararys, um,… a buncha’ kinds. Might you be interested in purpoosing, pursooting, poorpoot…do you wanna see the catamalog?”
Ready as I’d ever be I ventured forth. Unfortunately ringing doorbells and hiding in the bushes with knobby knees clanking out a frantic symphony of sheer terror wasn’t yielding the sort of payday I had in mind. Standing dumbfounded, bug-eyed and speechless until the confused furrow-browed homeowner muttered “go home, kid” was progress, but profits remained elusive.
Emerging from a thick blue cloud of spent Virginia Slims 100s, a lethargic housewife wrapped in terrycloth answered my fourteenth attempt, clinging to a telephone with yellowing, tobacco-stained fingers while Mike Douglas bored the socks off Flip Wilson with inane chatter on the idiot box. Shortly before hyperventilating and passing out on my “He-he-he-he-he-he-um-he-he-um-gosh-he-he-um-hel-um….lo, ummm… n-n-n-n-neighbor!” I recall hearing a deep, raspy: “Can I call you back? Some kid with wet sneakers is choking to death on my porch.” And with that, I graduated to the door-to-door agriculture early retirement plan.
Oh but I was a persistent little mama’s nightmare, let me tell you. (Or insane, if you go by Einstein’s definition of insanity as “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”) Door-to-door greeting card sales: What housewife wouldn’t kill for the opportunity to shop for slabs of overpriced cardboard in the comfort and luxury of her own meticulously sterile 1970s suburban home? The folks at Acme Greeting Card & Plumbing Supply assured me that their cards “practically sell themselves!” A simple wave of their “exciting full color catalog” in the window would magnetically draw Bored Housewifeus Americanus, breakfast martini in tow, across rust & avocado green Ultra-Shag carpeting, away from the imaginary clutches of The Edge of Night’s debonair Skylar Whitney and straight into my vinyl “Santa’s Village, Florida” souvenir wallet.
The catch? Of course. When it comes to 100% guaranteed get rich quick schemes there’s always a minor catch. Apparently my diligent labors would not be rewarded in cash but with a choice of “fabulous and dazzling” prizes, all described in my full color official Acme Greeting Card & Plumbing Supply Junior Greeting Card Associate Sales Kit.
“Fabulous” was hardly the word a suburban Detroit eight-year old with moderately psychotic tendencies might use to describe a pamphlet devoid of BB guns, explosives, hatchets and flammable liquids. The only prize worthy of inflicting grave bodily harm was an X-Acto knife kit consisting of a sturdy handle and twenty interchangeable razor sharp blades in a finely crafted wooden display case. By that age I had already acquired more knives than a well-provisioned Rambo/ninja hybrid superhero but I figured I could keep the handle for mashing bugs and sell the blades to kindergartners at twenty-five cents a pop.
In practical terms that amounted to fifty sticks of foot-long Bubs Daddy chewing gum or thirty-three chocolate & caramel Marathon bars which could all be parlayed into still bigger profits on the Hatherly Elementary School black lunch market. The idea was sheer genius compared to the previous year’s business strategy, a somewhat less than profitable attempt at selling scraps of wire, bottle caps and coils of old string out of my desk.
This was my last chance and I wasn’t going to screw it up. I spent hours honing and polishing my sales technique. That is to say, I spent hours in front of The Price Is Right, studying the graceful hand flourishes of the original (and still the best) Barker’s Beauty, Janice Pennington, as she “showed them what they’ve won!” I had it down pat, the silky, graceful manner in which she’d unfurl her arms in some sort of bastardized upside-down Easy-care polyester version of a Hawaiian Hula dance. I wouldn’t even have to speak. I’d just ring the doorbell, pass a classic Pennington Hand Sweep over the “exciting full color catalog” and stand back while the greeting cards “practically sold themselves!”
By the end of my first day I had pretty much had enough of The Man stomping my neck down into the dirt of capitalist serfdom with his spit-polished jackboot of forced labor. Turns out the cards didn’t sell themselves. But my mom sure did, to both grandmas, my aunt, and Mrs. Murie. Mom had earned enough points to qualify me for the X-Acto knife set so I scribbled out the requisite forms and sent them off. At The Man’s request, I allowed 4-6 weeks for delivery.
Every day I sat on the stoop out front, waiting for Big Brown, muttering a quiet “poo face!” at the passing blue postal service Jeep. That’s right, no more goobermint free-loading mail lady for me. I was pissing in the tall weeds with the big delivery dogs now: UPS. Movin’ on up. To the big time. Perhaps even, if I played my greeting cards right, to a dee-lux apartment in the sky-y-y-y. And then one day, 2-4 weeks earlier than anticipated, a chubby little fellow in brown polyester shorts waddled up the driveway and handed over my loot.
I tore open the box, stepped back briefly to admire the fine European craftsmanship of the display case, unwrapped the blades from their protective tissue, and carefully inserted each into its designated slot in the clear vinyl organizer pocket. Within hours I had transformed mom’s hand-embroidered curtains to hamster cage bedding, doubled our yard’s population of earthworms (twice as many, half the size each), and developed a revolutionary new system for pruning dad’s fruit trees.
Calling it a solid day’s work I parked my Big Wheel, cracked open a cold Faygo root beer and proceeded to scan the classifieds…