The Little Table That Couldn't Sell Cringe

Since September I’ve been dabbling in the antiques and furniture restoration business with my friend Valery. That’s part of the reason my weekly cringe has lapsed into an every-once-in-a-while cringe. Not that I haven’t been cringing during this time-- I just haven’t been dutifully recording.

We purchased a vintage porcelain-topped kitchen table at an antique fair at a great price, assuming it would turn around quickly for handsome profit. We didn’t even need to fix, sand, paint or polish it.

But it sat in our “inventory” (two cluttered garages that increasingly irritate our husbands) unsold. Admired, but unsold. It seemed a dead horse. We listed it on Ebay and clicked the local delivery or pick-up option.

That’s when I became acquainted with Barbara from Santa Rosa, California. She bid on the table three times in a row, feverishly. Barbara was our only bidder. Boy, did she want this $75 table. At the close of the sale, I immediately received a phone call from her.

Barbara and I began to speak three times per day. I spoke to Barbara more often than to my mother and all friends and family combined for a one week period. The Santa Rosa number appeared morning, noon and night on my caller id. She was hyper-focused on the task of arranging shipping (at her cost) for the thousands of miles between us.

I quickly gather that Barbara is a woman who probably has eighty kitchen tables in her home. She is an Ebay addict and most likely a hoarder. She tells me that she has been seeking a green porcelain-topped utility table for years. She wants to drink coffee at this specific table in the mornings, while working at her canning food hobby. She is thrilled that she has “won” the table. Barbara’s Ebay profile indicates that she has bought and sold over two thousand items.

Barbara tells me of all of the flea market locations in New Jersey that I should check out. She has spent time traveling cross country hitting every flea market in the continental United States. The Cowtown Rodeo is her favorite. Yes, the Cowtown Rodeo is in New Jersey, located in a pocket of the state that is unknown to even the most ardent Jersey native.

Barbara discovers that the table will cost her roughly $350 to ship. I tell Barbara on our second chat that I am willing to forget the sale with no mar to her Ebay record. I understand that the exorbitant shipping fee makes this a ridiculous notion. Oh no, she protests. She wants the table. She needs it. She is going to make this work. There are many calls about whether or not I can unscrew the legs (no), and even if I could saw them off to reduce the shipping fee. She was prepared to reattach them on the west coast.

The sawing-off-the-legs conversation left me speechless. My farewell was always the same: Barbara, really, it’s no big deal if we cancel this sale. It seems unreasonable to pay $350 shipping for a $75 table.

She’s pumped when she calls two days before Thanksgiving. She’s found a great solution if I’m willing to help her. She can have the table shipped on a Greyhound bus for only $70. She will send me an additional $130 to pack the table and drop it off at a Greyhound terminal two hours from my home.

I’m about to tell Barbara that I’ve accidently lit the table on fire and it is no longer available. But, then, she mentions that the Greyhound terminal is in Atlantic City.

I call my “business partner”, Valery. We both love Blackjack. Drop off the table and earn $65 each for some mid-day table action. We’re in. I tell Barbara her table will be shipped on Monday and she wires our gambling funds to my paypal account.

After a two-hour journey with our big old package yesterday morning, the supervisor at Greyhound informs us that our box is too big. The acceptable dimensions Greyhound lists on their website do not apply to Atlantic City. Why? Unsure.

I’m aggravated. Not only is this messing up my gambling nooner, but how am I going to break it to Barbara that her little green table might never come to be? The thought of this heartbreaking phonecall is causing me cringe. I’m imagining that Barbara might decide to drive cross country for the table and want to stay with me.

I ask the supervisor what dimensions are allowed. We’re only three inches off. Valery and I rip the box from the table and begin to repurpose it. It becomes a work of abstract art in the Greyhound terminal, a vision of rough cardboard pieces affixed on an upside down form that looks like a cow carcass sheathed in bubble wrap.

Drifters laugh at our project. The supervisor watches in disbelief. We are two women on a mission, bending and sweating to meet and exceed our customer’s expectations. I’m running a circle around the brown heap with sticky tape. Barbara’s table is not coming home with us. The tattered monstrosity is sufficiently reduced, re-measured, and loaded into a cargo hold. California here she comes…

Our creative deed is rewarded by Lady Luck. Amazingly, the casino yields us $220 in combined winnings in just one hour of play. We head for the sunny Garden State Parkway to retrieve our children from school with lighter car and fuller pockets.

Losing It at Work Cringe

I cringe when I recall the time I completely lost it at work. My wonderful boss and mentor, Jill, took a sabbatical. Weeks later, another member of the human resources department, my dear friend Tammy, hugged me goodbye on the eve of her maternity leave. My role as the placid, behind-the-scenes-gal responsible for payroll and pension matters hastily expanded. My absent co-workers had dealt with disgruntled managers, workers and discipline. It wasn't my thing.

The managers now charged up to my office, barking about problems beyond the shop doors. Men in steel-toed boots lined my corridor. A red voicemail light never stopped blinking. The intercom system blasted, “Tracy Ryan! Please call extension 100!” In my eight years with the company as benefits administrator, pages for me were rare. Now they echoed through 200,000 square feet of machinery. Smiles grew infrequent on my thirty-three-year-old face. Blotches of frustration and a deepening frown line between my brows replaced them.

I appealed to upper management. I’m drowning, I told them. I need a buoy.

A temporary manager arrived in a smart suit. Jargon flowed from her lips, supported by gestures made with manicured hands. Amelia offered a wealth of meaningless organizational theory. Familiar with sterile corporate offices, she was green to the gritty demands of a fast-paced industrial facility. The P.A. system continued to drone for me, as Amelia artfully positioned a plant on her windowsill and gawked at the disordered stacks on my desk.

She heaped more on my suffocated inbox. Loopy writing covered post-it notes. Please handle this. Please provide me with a copy of... My buoy was a well-dressed lady who didn’t know how to swim-- her hands clasped around my neck.

“I’ll need you to write a memo ...,” Amelia directed me one afternoon, her mouth revived with lipstick.

I held my hand out like a crossing guard—STOP.

“Do you see my workload? Are you kidding me?” Blood swooshed around my ears.

Swearing ensued. A stream of f-bombs rose from my chest. I morphed into an expletive-hurling lioness. I hollered at this woman, calling her useless, ridiculous, and railing against the company with more vigor than the saltiest operator on the factory floor.

“Why are you cursing at me?” she blanched.

“Because I’m sick of this goddamn place and I don’t need you- a (bleeping) robot- giving me more $#@! to do.”

“How dare you speak to me like this.”

We stared. My adrenaline plummeted. I tried to apologize but my jaw opened and closed as if taffy stuck to my fillings. Amelia smoothed her neat hair.

The vice president summoned me, confused. He wasn’t certain he could believe Amelia’s report of my vulgar tirade.

“Did you really call her a useless piece of $&%#*^! @*($?”

“Yeah, I lost it.”

His expression indicated a curious mix of disapproval and excitement. He didn’t know I had it in me. I didn’t know either. I resigned a few months later, giving myself up to a try at stay-at-home momhood. It was time.

Please feel free to share your story of losing it at work in the comments section. Not proud moments...but they sure are funny sometimes.

Stalked By The Mary Kay Lady Cringe

I was behind a pink Cadillac at a stoplight yesterday and felt the charge of cringe. The memory of my first year in New Jersey (1997), which included an unlikely relationship with a Mary Kay Lady, washed in. The powder pink vehicle reminded me of the vulnerability that often accompanies transition.

I moved to New Jersey after becoming engaged. It was an exciting happy time, but also a big change from singlehood—being surrounded by friends and roommates in my familiar post-college territory of Alexandria, Virginia. My first NJ job as a recruiter for a staffing agency was as stimulating as a bad blister on the back of a heel. Each day was a chafing rub. I would battle traffic every morning wishing for a fender-bender that would keep me from arriving. The position involved matching underemployed mental health professionals with temporary stints at hospitals. It sounds altruistic, but really it was a high-pressure cold-calling sales job which I couldn’t have been less suited for.

Joan was a middle-aged former psychiatric nurse who was the number one go-to for any Psych R.N. position that needed filling. She was sweet and reliable. She liked to work per diem because her main source of income was peddling Mary Kay cosmetics. She spoke at length about the joy and financial reward the Mary Kay Corporation provided her.

I made the mistake of mentioning to Joan that I could use some new make-up. I didn’t realize that I had entered the dizzying frenzy of the Mary Kay machine. Joan immediately invited me to her house for a private consultation. She dipped my hands in some treatment, “Now you have satin hands!”, and applied a painter’s tray worth of eye shadow on my lids. I looked like I had been prepped to be a stage dancer in The Chorus Line. As she blushed my cheeks bright pink, she gushed about her love of her Mary Kay career.

“Sounds great,” I mumbled politely.

At the end of my consultation, I held a bag full of pink and white products, and a cassette tape.

“Please listen to this in the car on your ride home,” she whispered excitedly. “You are just the kind of beautiful young woman I would love on my team.”

On her team? I was glammed up and disoriented. When I arrived back at our apartment, Marty looked confused too. “You look…..,” he searched for the right descriptor, “…different.”

Ill-suited to be a fast-talking recruiter, I was even less fit to sell make-up. I never wore any. Still don’t. I am part of a small population of girls whose mothers actively encouraged them to wear more make-up in their teens. My mother urged me daily to put on a little blush and still pesters me today. In my early twenties, when I complained to her about not having a boyfriend for a while, her suggestion was to put on a little mascara.

The cassette tape was a flowery cult-initiation device. It described a woman’s ascent from broken down trailer-home to being seated at the boys choir concert in Vienna after achieving a top Mary Kay sales award. I passed the tape along to my friend’s husband, Rich, and he found it so entertaining that he listened to the tape regularly on his commutes.

The tape was only the beginning. Joan called me regularly. She really wanted me on her squad. She saw that I had what it takes in our one meeting. You see, Mary Kay is a multi-level marketing operation, and Joan is more likely to drive the pink Cadillac and listen to the Austrian choir when she gets a cut of every tube of concealer that her underlings sell.

I still needed Joan to hand out thorazine at psychiatric facilities, so I wasn’t very forceful about my lack of interest. I was vague. Joan sent me little notes at home. She told me I was beautiful and smart. She drew hearts on the edges of the paper.

It was getting creepy. I was being stalked by a Mary Kay henchwoman.

I finally broke the news to Joan that I would never pursue the Mary Kay dream. She told me how sorry she was and that she would always be there for me if I changed my mind.

I wonder if it was her in that pink Cadillac yesterday.

The Jacuzzi and Ice Cream Man Cringe

For over a decade, I have enjoyed the PBS series Antiques Roadshow. The premise involves antique appraisal experts touring the United States to visit conference halls where regular people line up with “treasures” in arms: furniture and pottery passed down from long-gone ancestors, garage sale finds, childhood toys. Everyone is hoping that for example, Aunt Pearl’s grandfather’s desk, is worth oodles of money. There have been notable episodes which featured a hidden revolutionary war document found behind an old painting, a rare (rather insignificant-looking) side table worth hundreds of thousands, and a Native American hand-carved bowl that looked like a shop project gone wrong worth $50k. The allure of the show is all about luck. Watchers daydream that they could have the same providence. The folks who line up in the Antiques Roadshow queue probably enjoy gambling. The part of the brain that lights up at the sound of coins ringing in a slot machine likely throbs on line at the roadshow.

Antiques Roadshow has often hosted programs at one of the largest annual antique outdoor fairs in America located in Brimfield, Massachusetts. Brimfield is antiques mecca. I have always wanted to go. In Brimfield, there are thousands of tents erected in a Berkshire Mountain Valley “brimming” with potential bounty. George Washington’s last will and testament (an unknown version) just might be located in the trap pocket of an old doctor’s satchel. In early September, I rented a cargo van with two girlfriends and headed north for five hours. I sat in a beach chair in the back, rumbling over the potholes of the George Washington Bridge. Even if I didn’t uncover George’s hidden documents, I planned to buy stuff and bring it home to sell at a profit. It was a business venture.

We arrived in the early morning and walked the fields for eight hours. We lugged small dressers, chairs, frames, stained glass windows, and interesting building salvage back to the white Unabomber van. Bushed, we headed back to the hotel we booked for the evening. We planned to visit the acres we missed the next morning and stock up again. That luck-seeking part of my brain was pumping.

At the hotel, we passed by an indoor pool and gurgling, empty hot tub. The chlorine frothed on top. I thought that the Jacuzzi looked inviting—a place to unwind from my day of furniture moving. My friends did not want to enter the public Petri dish. Suit yourself, I called, and changed into my swimsuit. The hot water felt good and I shut my eyes for a few peaceful minutes.

Then I heard the plunk of legs in the foam across from me. A man—a stranger—entering the tub. It’s a cringe moment. I’m suddenly in a bath tub with someone. He’s roughly my age and nods at me, then closes his eyes. I’m negotiating how quickly I can exit. It’s one of those odd social predicaments: do I jump up from the water like I’m physically threatened (which I wasn’t), stay as long as I wanted, or wait two cringey minutes and shove off? I pick choice #3 and scurry back to the room, where one friend is performing yoga stretches on the bed to ease the sciatica gained from carrying a porcelain-topped table across a field.

The following day we resume our treasure hunt. Mid-afternoon, we break at an ice-cream stand advertised with a big soft-serve cone ornament. Ice cream seems the perfect idea. I start to order and look up at the ice cream man. It’s my Jacuzzi mate. I say vanilla-chocolate twist, please, with a gulp. As I’m walking away, I’m wondering if the image of my flesh in a swimsuit pops into his head along with the thought that I maybe shouldn’t be stopping for ice cream.

Booted Out Of Restaurant Cringe--Part II

The follow-up from last week....

Angry Cook took Marty’s phone call, and yelled while he crashed commercial pots against surfaces. He claimed Brendan (a.k.a. the worst kid ever) had been throwing glass salt and pepper shakers around his restaurant, repeatedly. Marty countered that there was no way the three adults at the table (me and my two cousins) would have allowed a one-year-old to pitch glass objects across the room. Angry Cook was nuts—maybe he had suffered some form of heat stroke in his sizzling kitchen. Marty accused Angry Cook of being a lousy businessman, and expressed how displeased he was to hear this outrageous story from an extremely upset wife, especially about a place we spent most Sunday mornings at surrounded by other noisy families. Angry Cook refused to apologize, defending his privilege to rid his establishment of our little menace. In the highlight of their conversation, Angry Cook said, “Why don’t you come down here and we can settle this like men?”

“Did you just seriously say that? Dude…get a hold of yourself! You are so out of control right now. I think you need help.”

While Marty argued with a lunatic, I called to get comfort from my dear friend, Tammy. I needed to speak to someone who would be even more outraged than me. Tammy is a passionate, loyal being. She is Brendan’s godmother-- this strengthened her fury. After telling our tale of restaurant booting, my humiliating cringe, I worried that she might leave her job to drive over and throw rocks at Angry Cook’s window—or worse. The best part about speaking to Tammy after such an incident is her amazing creativity with colorful words. If there were a Pulitzer prize for inventive swearing, she would win the gold category. The Angry Cook became a sad, little, sack of s%!@, a slab of meat, a piss-poor excuse for a man, a rancid &@$! cook, a bleeping speck of bacteria that should find his face in boiling fry oil.

Tammy was on fire, these admonishments flowing effortlessly.

The story spread. I received generous support against the Angry Cook. Ted, of the ferry and gas station cringes, vowed to take his children to the restaurant on a crowded Sunday morning and command them to behave like wild animals. Many in my neighborhood wrote off the luncheonette forever, despite the good food.

In the end, maybe the Angry Cook lost a little business, and I was fortified by all of the great people I am lucky to have in my life—including my little screamer, Brendan.

But a lingering problem….three years later, even when Brendan is quietly eating a grilled cheese out somewhere, I still cringe. My heart beats a tad faster. I am fearful of all swinging kitchen doors.

Booted Out Of Restaurant Cringe

When recalling cringeworthy circumstances, I’ve discovered an unsettling pattern— that of damsel-in-distress.

Around the time my younger son, Brendan, was smearing poop all over his crib (summer 2007), he got us kicked out of a diner. I’ve been in restaurant settings where parents have let their kin run around like rabid dogs. I’ve heard crying, screaming, stamping, smacking. I’ve seen kids throw fistfuls of food at their families, at passing waitresses, and at innocent customers. I’ve wished that children would be ejected from restaurants. But I never thought it really happened.

It was a muggy August day. Brendan had just turned one. He had a big drool-drippy grin with a few teeth, and a new habit of shrieking. It was an irritating yet happy cry-- an affirmation that he had vocal chords, and that his high-pitched yelp caused a reaction. I cringed each time he crowed. Strangers laughed or threw dirty looks. I fantasized about creating and marketing a baby muzzle.

I had no prototype yet for the baby muzzle when out to lunch that day with my kids and my two cousins. We were seated at my favorite place in town--a small luncheonette with hearty food. I had spent nearly every Sunday morning of my Brendan pregnancy there enjoying greasy, magnificent breakfasts.

We ordered. The food took longer than usual. Brendan squirmed in his high chair. SHRIEK. Shhhhhh!!!! My cousins distracted him with silly faces and crayons. I figured the food was coming, and the antics would end once his chubby mitts hooked around grilled cheese.

“Just leave your drinks and leave!” a loud voice bellowed behind me. I turned to see the cook owner, red-faced. Confused, I looked from him to my cousins, and waited for someone to make sense of the scene.

“Excuse me?” I asked.

“This is the worst kid I’ve ever seen. You’ve got to leave. Just leave your drinks and go.”

No one at the table moved. My cousins appeared baffled. Sure, Brendan had screeched here and there, but he was seated, giggling, happy, and hungry. We were all hungry.

The angry cook disappeared through the swinging kitchen door. Our waitress cringed. She avoided eye contact, mouthing that she was sorry as she wiped down the counter with a rag.

“Is he really kicking us out of here?” I asked, stunned. No one answered, except four- year-old Christopher, “But we haven’t had lunch and I’m hungry!”

The other customers watched as we shuffled out, cringing over their own dilemma: continue listening (uncomfortably) to the high notes of the famished baby or defend the group from mistreatment?

On the sidewalk, I wanted to vomit. As I buckled car seats and heaved a stroller into my hatchback, the humiliation gelled. I had just been hurled out into the street. My blood pumped crazily-- I could hear it pulse in my ears.

I punched the restaurant phone number into my cell phone and demanded an apology from the jerk.

“Apologize?” he snorted. “I’m not apologizing to you--- you need to go read some parenting magazines.”

I would have preferred a wasp fly into my car window and sting me.

I viewed Brendan in the rearview mirror and imagined visiting him at a baby reform school. He smiled and waved.

I argued with the mutant cook for a few minutes. Then I hung up and cried. I gulped and hyperventilated and batted tears and a runny nose with the back of my hand. I was a shitty mother who had a kid who needed a muzzle. I dialed my husband, Marty, at work. I’m not a big crier, so he immediately thought some horrible tragedy had occurred, like a car wreck. “What’s happened? Are you okay? Tell me….are you okay?” he sounded panicked.

I sputtered, cried, and huffed out the story. The line was quiet while I explained.

“What’s this asshole’s number?” he said, getting his Jersey-boy up. I wonder if he was cringing, weighed down by a wife who managed to complicate retail transactions in a quiet shore town. It was just about one year since the gas station incident….

TO BE CONTINUED…..

C.C.D. Sign-up Cringe

I recently enrolled my first grader for C.C.D. -- the Catholic equivalent to Sunday school or Hebrew school. It is the pre-requisite for receiving Holy Communion and Confirmation. For most people, signing up would be a mundane task…filling out a few forms at the local parish. For me, it caused acute cringe.

As I stood in front of the religious education secretarial desk last week, hesitantly handing over the forms, my heart raced and I felt faint. I couldn’t believe that I was signing Christopher up for a program that tortured me so as a child. My sixth grade self would be astonished—speechless-- horrifed. How did I turn into a grown-up who no longer enjoys rollercoaster rides and would force an innocent six-year-old down the plank to dreaded C.C.D? I am certain that 1983 Tracy promised that she would never exact this punishment on her offspring. I believe I shouted that each week at my mother as she drove me to my captivity.

My husband, Marty, doesn’t understand this dilemma. He went to Catholic school for twelve years, and never had to set foot in an uncomfortable classroom (it was always either too hot or cold at C.C.D. afterschool) at 4 p.m. for eight grueling years. He could ride his bicycle afterschool on Tuesday afternoons and laugh with his buddies until dinner time. He wasn’t a hostage in a metal seat.

My eight years of C.C.D. caused a condition called Post Traumatic Boredom Disorder (PTBD). I become symptomatic when entering any religious establishment. My brain chemistry has been permanently altered—mapped to fall into a boredom coma at church. I try to listen to the sermon. I really do. I attempt to enjoy the choral music. The problem is I revert back to that vexed sixth grader—I return to the stifling classroom at St. Mary’s on Valley Road. I can see the utilitarian clock above the blackboard, its hands never moving. I can hear Sister Kevin’s robed shuffle down the speckled hallway, her sinister face peering into the door panel. The PTBD is so debilitating it renders me unable to daydream in church. I am a person who can daydream anywhere. I have a daydreaming dependence problem. Church overrides it. A component of PTBD is pseudo-dementia. I can never remember the prayers, chants, or the order of the stand-up-sit-down routine.

The secretary at the C.C.D. office looked up at me, her face registering concern. I must have appeared woozy.

“I’m having a hard time with this,” I stammered. She shifted her head to the side in puzzlement. My throat felt dry as I continued.

“I really hated C.C.D. as a kid. It was so….boring,” my vocabulary returned to that of a sixth-grader. “I’m having a hard time thinking that I’m sending my son to this. C.C.D. turned me off to religion.” I exhaled. I had said it.

The secretary was kind. She assured me that C.C.D. had come along way since the 70s/80s. She whipped out the first grade workbook and showed me the creative projects inside. I tried to concentrate, but the PTBD was blocking comprehension. I thanked her and jogged to my car. There are few things that compel me to jog.

At home over dinner, I told Marty about my experience. He cringed. Bigtime. Due to twelve solid years of Catholic school and regular church attendance, he suffers from Catholic guilt.

“You really said that?”
“Yeah…I just couldn’t help it.”

His shoulders raised with a sharp inhalation of breath. I know what he was thinking. The C.C.D. secretary probably stamped “Heathen Mother” in our file. It was on its way in an inter-office envelope to the Monsignor.

Please feel free to share your C.C.D. experiences in the comments section!