36: Reverse precision
When I tell a story, I struggle to choose the relevant details. I start too late or too early. I see my audience’s eyes go glassy and I rush to the end, then throw in the missing steps as verbal footnotes. So here’s the knife story told in
Reverse precision
At 9:46 AM on June 25, 2002, in a rented storefront in Henrietta, New York, I opened a cardboard box and drew out a chef’s knife, a steak knife, a paring knife, and a pair of kitchen scissors: the sample set for my new “job” (zero-hour, commission-only) selling cutlery for kitchen and home from the Cutco Corporation, through its subsidiary Vector Marketing.
My neighbors did not buy the knives. My aunt and uncle did not buy the knives. My teachers, my friends’ parents, the dentist and her receptionist did not buy the knives. After two minutes flipping through the catalog, a closer relation picked out a sideline item.
Said item was ordered; presumably it was plucked off a row in a warehouse at the manufacturing plant just a few towns away, packed, picked up by USPS, driven to an industrial van to a regional sorting facility, driven to the Lima, New York post office, then taken by a smaller commercial van to the mailbox at the end of our driveway.
Then it entered me (haste, slice) and I retreated to Ixtapa and/or Zihuatanejo — plans had changed, I’ve never gotten clarity — to hand out tracts, mix cement for an outbuilding, and perform in a mimed musical called “Storyteller,” all on behalf of Elim Gospel Church and its sister organization Elim Fellowship.
I would then attend two semesters at Grove City College, majoring first in political science and then in English (a degree program I would never complete), before spending the following June, July, and August at Tim Hortons, the Canadian coffee chain that, in an apparently fascinating surprise to friends and family, boasted multiple locations south of the border, including two in Henrietta. So I cleaned floors, took out the trash, brewed coffee, ran the register, and bagged (but did not bake or decorate) donuts of 23 varieties in rotation, in shifts of six to eight hours, for the minimum wage of $5.15 per hour. I was a good employee, but I was fired in August for routinely arriving five minutes late.
Rec: Listen, Beautiful Márcia
It’s not on-theme for the project or anything, but the graphic novel Listen, Beautiful Márcia is one of those rich, every-emotion stories that make everything else seem shallow. It’s about a Brazilian nurse whose rebellious adult daughter gets involved with a gang. And it’s beautiful, visually and narratively.
Someone smart put it on the front table at St. Mark’s Comics in Industry City, and its quality was obvious from the cover (and a skim of the first page).
Here’s a longer excerpt, though it’s a spoiler. If you can, borrow it from me. If you can’t, buy it. Or get it from the library. I’m not your boss.