Selling Quick Job

Fresh out of school, I hadn’t gotten a scholarship and my parents couldn’t afford to put me through college, but I knew I wanted to travel. I looked for jobs that included travel, but there wasn’t much out there for high school graduates with no particular job skill.

One afternoon, I saw an ad in a newspaper for a traveling sales job, so I immediately called. They were having mass interviews at a local hotel ballroom and told me I could come the following day at any given time between certain hours and fill out an application. Interviews were guaranteed.

So, my mom and I came up with a nice suit from the Goodwill, and I did my hair up and put on some light makeup. I arrived early to make a good impression, and greeted the lady who opened the doors to the ballroom.

She was impressed by my being so early and invited me in for coffee.

We chatted and sipped coffee while I filled out the application and even if I didn’t get the job, I felt it was worth it to get to sit in this beautiful place and share pleasantries with such a nice, pretty lady. (Probably in her late fifties, or very early sixties.)

She excused herself for a few minutes while I worked on my paperwork, and then slowly, applicants started filing into the big room, preceded by company people and before long, the whole place was nearly full, and loud. I stood up and began looking around to see where to turn my application in at, when the lady tapped me on the shoulder. She was standing next to probably the handsomest guy I had ever seen.

He introduced himself as ‘Dan”, shook hands with me and asked me to follow him. We went behind one of many petitions that were set up for interviews and sat down at a small folding table across from one another.

He looked at my application and seemed genuinely surprised that at 18, I had held down a few jobs. He asked quickly about each one but was hyper focused on the questions about the door-to-door sales of my junior year for a vacuum cleaner company called Vorwerk, (pronounced “worverk”). I was able to produce from my bag all of the sales commendations I had brought and he seemed satisfied with that.

He went on to ask if I recognized the lady who I had met earlier, (which I didn’t), and then told me she was a former actress who had worked on Elvis films and who owned the company I would be working for.

I stopped him.

“Wait. Did I get the job?”

“Young lady”, he said, “you had the job before I ever came out here. She was very impressed with you and doesn’t want you to have to wait for this round of hiring. We’re hoping to put you to work right away. You’ll have “on-the-job” training and all the support you need. Can you be in Atlanta on Monday morning?”

I think I got as far as “um”, when he went on.

“Our managing director is in Atlanta on business next week, and he can take you to meet our team in Oregon.”

It was a flurry of feelings that swept over me, but the biggest most mind-scrambling thing was that these people thought I was so great that they couldn’t wait to put me to work. How exciting that was! Of course, I couldn’t answer right way. My parents were the ones who would have to drive me to Atlanta and I didn’t know for sure if they could even afford gas money after helping me get through private school.

“Can I get back to you?” I asked. I had thought to explain why, but Dan was immediately okay with that. He stood up, not wanting to waste a lot of time, and shook my hand.

“Absolutely!” he said. “It’s a big step and this life isn’t for everyone.”

“Oh, it’s not that!” I replied, standing also. “My parents will have to drop me off in Atlanta and I want the opportunity talk to them about it before I go.”

“Understood.” He said. Then he handed me a twenty-dollar bill out of a stack of twenties he pulled from his pocket. “Make sure to offer this to your parents for their gas and trouble getting you there and let me know if they run into any other expenses.”

“I will.” I answered. “Thank you so much!”

“The pleasure was all mine.”

With that, he turned and was back out on the floor networking. I stood just outside the partition for a few minutes looking at the dozens and dozens of people in attendance. Under the light of the massive chandeliers, so many walks of life donned the muted red Persian carpet. I couldn’t understand why, with so many options, they would choose me so quickly. Shaking my head, I hurried home to give mom and dad the good news.

My mother was instantly angry with me because she thought it was a scam and she refused to let me go.

“They hired you because they know you’re a stupid kid. All they have to do is make you feel special, lure you away from your parents, and then you’re never seen again! I am not driving you!”

I started crying and my stepdad intervened.

“Hey.” He reminded mom. “She’s eighteen-years-old now. You can’t tell her no.” My mom turned an evil stare on him, but he rolled his eyes.

“Oh yeah? Well I’m not going to drive her up there and if anyone else tries to, they’ll answer to me!” she yelled.

“Darlin.” He answered, trying to calm her down. “She’s eighteen. She wants to travel, and this company actually hired her on the spot, based on her own merits. They saw she was early to the interview, has had experience and actually has paperwork showing that she’s good at it. She was dressed well, and she had some private time with the owner. All of that says to me that she earned the right to have this job, and we need to let her at least try. It’s not like she can’t call home if she decides it’s not for her.”

At that, my dad looked at me. “Don’t you have something you can be doing somewhere else right now?”

Nodding, I left and went to my room. I sat looking at the magazines on my shelves. Photos were clipped from them of all the places I had wanted to see, and I thought about the fact that there wasn’t a single thing in Oregon among them. Heck, I didn’t even know anyone who had ever been to Oregon. Why in the world would I want to go there?

‘Why in the world wouldn’t I?’ I thought. I had never been there, so the thought of seeing it for the first time, knowing nothing about it, was exciting. I only had two days to call Dan back on the number on the card he gave me and I was so scared my mother would refuse to let me go. Then suddenly the door came open and my parents were standing there.

“Ok.” Mom said. “You can go, but if you need anything, or you want to talk, call me collect. Don’t feel like we would think less of you if you get out there and decide you don’t like it. You can always come home and we’re here to help you get going again.”

I was heartbroken, but excited at the same time. The wash of emotions put me into tears as I jumped up and hugged my parents.

I will never forget how hard it was to leave them. My dad insisted on meeting the guy who would be going to the airport with me and then driving me to meet with the crew once we arrived in Oregon. So the man invited my parents up to the hotel room, where he was in the process of packing his bags to make sure he got us to the airport on time. (There were two others going with us, both a little older than myself.)

Mr. G, as they called him, assured my dad that he would give me the considerations of his own daughter and look after me. He gave my dad his card and told him they could call him any time if they were unable to reach me for any reason and he would personally make sure I got to call them. I hugged my parents before getting into the front seat with Mr. G, and I won’t ever forget the smell of my mother’s perfume, or the feeling of her tears on my shoulder.

“Please God, don’t let them hurt my Roni.” She whispered in my ear.

“I’m going to be ok, mom.” I tried to reassure her. “I promise.” I know I was saying it, but after hearing what she said and seeing the raw terror in her eyes as we bid farewell, I doubted myself.

It was short lived. Once we got going, Mr. G had a lot of questions to take our minds off what had just happened. The other two young adults, (a guy and his girlfriend), had just climbed into the backseat, sat comfortably listening and stayed quiet. He told us a good deal about the product we would be selling. It was a concentrated cleaner called “Quick Job”. It would be retailing for $29.99 but if people would buy it from us when we knocked on their door, they could get it for $10.00. Apparently, the lady who started the company had stumbled on a revolutionary mixture of cleaning chemicals that appeared to clean just everything, without harming anything, and they were to launch in the open market sometime in two years.

I immediately felt relaxed with Mr. G. He was like a grandpa should be, in my opinion, and was happy to lend an ear to my questions. I would get a minimum wage check once a month for 35 hours a week, and a commission on my sales. For every gallon I sold, I got half the money in cash at the end of the day. This was how we could afford to eat. He said that even if I didn’t make any sales, I would get ten dollars advance on the following day so that I wouldn’t have to worry about being hungry.

It was a long flight and a long drive to meet at the hotel with the existing crew, but at their evening meeting, where they awarded prizes to top sellers, they introduced us to the others. There would be room assignments and a short film for us to take, followed by a brief test to see how well we understood the film.

I had to share a hotel room with a lady named Mary. She was from the mid-west but had gone to college in New York. I don’t mind saying that she was damaged goods and impossible to live with, but I made it work.

I was sent into the field my first day with a guy named Isaac, who looked a lot like Isaac from the Love Boat, so I thought the name suited him and had no trouble remembering it. (It wasn’t hard to remember Mary’s name because she talked about herself in the third person.) Isaac had been on a dry streak in sales but had prior to that time been their best earner. We worked well together and rarely hit a door that we could sell the stuff. The demonstrations of it convinced me that I was definitely taking some of this home to my mother at Christmas time. It was virtually odorless and so effective it was scary.

Since I was in training, I got the customary $10.00, and Isaac got his full commission on all 30 gallons we sold that day. The following morning, I had to figure out a way to eat on that $10.00 so I had coffee, biscuits and gravy and prayed for the best. They paired me up with Mary that day, and I instantly regretted it. I think Mary saw me as some stupid country girl, so she was always making fun of me. She made fun of the way I talked, the fact that I had no idea how big and evil the world really was. She was not very ethical in her way of selling. She appealed mostly to men and most women closed the door in her face. Mary was very pretty, slim and tall. She had high cheekbones, auburn hair and rich brown eyes. She had a winning smile, but you only saw it when she was verbally cutting you to ribbons with her wit.

The following days with Mary, I was beside myself with misery. I had made it less than a week and she was driving me crazy. I had been eating biscuits and gravy for breakfast, and an order of fries for dinner, and I lived in mortal fear of her getting us killed with her potty mouth. On the fifth day we were out together, we were dropped off in a “not so great looking” neighborhood. Mary professed that they did this to her a lot because they didn’t appreciate that her sales rivaled that of the men. Mary had no intention of selling anything in this area, so she called us a cab. Right now, I can’t even tell you what state we were in by that time, but it was one with a military base, because she had the cab driver leave us in an apartment complex right off post. We hit door after door of young attractive men who were so enticed by her smile and her sales pitch, that they let us in.

Mary immediately went to work flirting and had no trouble separating those guys with their ten bucks. Often they’d offer us beers, (which I never drank but she always did). The biggest problem with all of this was, they only gave you a cart with about 20 gallons in it when they dropped you off, so as you went along, the car would periodically come around and replenish if you were having a good day.

One guy who offered us a beer was watching a football game and offered to let us watch it with him. Something felt off, so I declined, but Mary quickly sat down on the couch with a beer, and they began talking. I told her I would be outside when she was ready. We were out of cleaner, and needed to get back before the car came back around. She told me to shut up and wait outside.

Angry with her for being so unprofessional, I stomped out the door and sat down on the cart in the shade of a tree. About an hour later, Mary came out, kissing that guy goodbye as she left.

She came to the cart, handed me a fifty-dollar bill, and then we walked to a pay phone and called another cab. The cab driver dropped us and our empty cart off in the original neighborhood we’d been given. It was too late to start again when they came by, so we got in and went back to the hotel. I understood that the $50.00 was hush money and she had likely been given a lot more for whatever she did with that guy, but I was going to eat good for the first time in over a week, and for that, I wasn’t going to tell on her.

When questioned if we left our designated area, I just shrugged and refused to answer. Mary may have been a jerk, but I wasn’t going to be the one to get her fired, either.

After a while, Dan, (remember the good-looking guy who hired me?), came into the room, dismissed everyone and sat opposite me. His almost black eyes bored into my soul as he sat there thinking about how he would deal with me.

“How are things going between you and Mary? Is she giving you any trouble?”

“Not really.” I told him. “I have a younger brother and sister who can be much worse.”

He kind of chuckled at me, then started again.

“I am thinking that since you start your last week of training tomorrow, I might move you to Georgina’s room. She’s a little softer to coexist with, and can give you some pointers on how to maximize your sales.”

“What’s the matter with Mary?” I asked.

“What isn’t the matter with Mary?” he cajoled with a wink. “It’d be a shorter list.”

We both laughed, then he returned to his serious face.

“I just want to give you all the tools you need to be successful and we have found that Mary’s level of patience with newcomers is spent after the first week. Georgina is a lot easier to work with and will have your success in the forefront of her mind.”

“Ok." I replied. “When should I move?”

“As soon as you get out of here.” He told me. “And by the way, my fiancé is going to be visiting us tomorrow. She asked after you and would like to see you again. She has asked about you on every call since the two of you met in Atlanta, so make sure to come by my room when you get finished tomorrow.”

“Sure.” I said, getting up and reaching out my hand for him to shake it. He looked at it with a smirk, shook my hand as was out the door.

I was grateful not to have to tell on Mary, but I don’t mind telling you she was nasty to me when she saw me packing. She threatened to kill me if she found out I had told on her. In my favor, Dan had had the foresight to send Georgina over to help me pack, and she assured Mary that I had said nothing, at which time, Mary hugged me.

It was one of the weirdest moments of my life. She was super nice to me after that… for both of the hours she was with the outfit before Dan kicked her out in the middle of the night. Georgina and I smuggled her into our room just a half-hour later and let her call someone to come pick her up. She stayed the night with us in her sleeping bag until we snuck her out in the pre-dawn hours to make sure no one would bother her. As she was heading down the stairs with her bags, Mary stopped and turned to look at me square in the eyes.

“Listen Georgia-girl. These men will use you until you’re used up and then act like you don’t exist if you let them. Never let them in. Once you do, you’re just free lunch to every asshole in this outfit and nothing you do will ever give you back your dignity. Stay sweet, kid.”

“You too, Mary.” I told her, to which she giggled as she walked away into the dark.

Georgina had sold about 10 gallons that first day by the time we got finished. I felt like I had let her down but as it came out, Georgina rarely sold more than eight, so her time with me was good. I did swing by Dan’s room after work to say hello to Ms. Pridgen. It was strange to see such a young, handsome man with his arm around such a seasoned woman. You could tell by her overall look, that she was once beautiful, but the years had stolen much of that from her. She was clearly getting on in years and Dan was in his early thirties. June, Ms Pridgen, had clear aqua colored eyes, and long bleach blonde hair. She wore tight dresses to accentuate the body she had obviously worked hard on and was in gorgeous high heels.

As we chatted, she presented the engagement ring that he’d given her, a rock practically the size of a cat's eye marble, and went on and on about how she hoped I would be with them long enough to attend the wedding, nearly a year away.

I nodded a lot and eventually made my way downstairs to the small restaurant to spend my $10 and grab a grilled cheese and a glass of water, leaving them to do whatever future newlyweds want to do. As I entered the room, Georgina was crying.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, sitting down next to her on her bed.

“Nothing.” She replied, trying to suck it up and put on a clear face for me.

“Come on. It’s okay.” I told her. “I won’t tell anyone. What’s happened?”

I don’t know if it’s because of how I handled the situation with Mary, or if she just had to explode, but she started sobbing again and told me everything. She had just learned that Dan proposed to Ms. Pridgen, and she had been having an affair with him for over six months. For some reason, she assumed that, since Dan had been sleeping with her, he had given up on June and would break up with her when she arrived, but he hadn’t.

I listened as she talked of all the starry nights they had enjoyed, all the tender dreams they shared and the sweet things he had said to her.

I had no difficulty believing her. Georgina was young, not quite thirty yet, still beautiful and largely altruistic. She had olive skin and long sun-streaked dark hair. Her eyes were large and round, glassy and green and she had a beautiful soul. I admit, when I first came, I wondered why she wasn’t married with kids somewhere because she would have made a fine mother. She was very nurturing and giving. Her sales approach was soft, and she left people happy to have been in her presence even if they bought nothing.

“You’re going to be okay.” I assured her. “You can do better than Dan.”

“No, I can’t.” She complained. “I’ll never find anyone more beautiful and caring than him.”

“If he cared, Gina, he’d be here with you right now.” (Jesus! I sounded just like my mother! What was I thinking?)

Her face shot up and she stopped crying for a moment.

“What?”

“Gina.” I said in soothing tones. “You’re the prettiest woman, and the nicest person I have ever met. Dan would be so blessed to have you for his own, but right now, he’s in his room having sex with some old lady because she has money, and you don’t. That’s not love. That’s not caring. You deserve all of a man’s love, and so much more than that, you deserve to give yourself more respect than to settle for any of the jerks on this crew… Dan included.”

She sat looking at me, seemingly deciding whether she wanted to admit I was right or not so I added to it.

“Remember what Mary said?”

Almost instantly, she was up off the bed, pushing Dan’s tennis sweaters and golf shorts into a bag. She walked them to the other side of the hotel and left the bag on the doorstep of Dan’s room. When she came back, we spent the whole night talking, braiding each other’s hair and planning our strategy to make sales the next day. We knew we would be tired the next morning, but planned to help each other stay awake.

Unfortunately, when we arrived for role call, we were put into separate vehicles. Dan, who almost never drove crew because he was too important for it, put me out by myself that morning. He told me he felt that I was ready to work alone and took off. I took the little wagon full of chemicals and walked up to the first door with caution.

I was afraid.

I had spent all of my impressionable years with a mother who warned me that strangers would just as soon kill you as to look at you, but I had made a pact with Gina to have a record day, so I collected myself and strolled up the driveway with a sample gallon of Quick Job and a rag.

As I made my way up the driveway, I took note of a beautiful silver Cadillac that had specialty rims, covered in brake dust. Quick Job removed that stuff in an instant. I had my plan. We had been instructed to look for a side door, that most people didn’t use their front entrance, so I knocked on the door right there at the driveway, rather than walking across the lawn to the front door. When I knocked, I saw someone move the blinds in the window next to me, in what looked like a kitchen. I waited for a few minutes, then knocked again but ultimately came to the conclusion that they weren’t coming to the door. I was just about to turn around and head back to my cart when the door creaked open. I stepped back and when the door was opened, I reached my hand out to the man standing there.

Flashing my best smile, I said: “Hi! I’m Veronica and I’m here to talk to you today about our concentrated cleaner, Quick Job.”

The man was slovenly and severely overweight. He’d had clothes on when he opened the window blinds, because I saw the shirt, but now, he was only wearing the robe. He was staring at me without speaking, making me extremely uncomfortable. As he didn’t take my outstretched hand, I looked down at it and was able to see that not only was he not wearing clothes under the robe, it didn’t fit… and something was showing.

My heart hammered in my chest. I didn’t know what to do. Part of me wanted to run, and part of me wanted to get the sale. I was scared, but I asked myself what would Mary do. Bad idea.

Not to give up easily, I decided to act like I hadn’t noticed and said: “I saw that you have some brake dust build-up on your hub caps.”

I backed up, and bent over a tire, spraying a light amount on it. As the dust liquified and ran off, I realized he was standing right behind me, very close behind me. As I was running down the driveway to my cart, I yelled out that it would be on the market soon and to keep an eye out for it.

I ran down through the neighborhood dragging that cart behind me until I saw the crew car two streets over. To get ahead of it, I dashed across the street and through a couple of yards to get in front of it. Dan saw me and stopped the car to wait.

As I arrived out of breath, I was struggling to get the encounter out and get ahold of myself. Dan listened to me with mild indifference then told me to unload my cart into the back of the trailer and get in. I complied and as I got in, Isaac was sitting in the back seat.

“What happened to you?” He asked.

I began explaining the encounter and after a moment, both men started laughing.

“I’m sorry.” Dan giggled from the front seat. “I hate that your first house was a rough one.”

“Rough?!” I shouted. “What if he comes after me?”

“Don’t worry.” Dan laughed. “We’re almost done with this neighborhood and will be off to the next in about fifteen minutes. That should give you time to calm down.”

“Shouldn’t I call the police?” I asked incredulously. “What that man did was illegal.”

“And unfortunately, you were on his property uninvited so unless you want to face charges as well, you might as well let this go. Besides, nothing happened.”

I was still in shock as the others got in the car. One of the other vans pulled up alongside us before we got set to leave and asked what happened. He had seen me running and was worried. Dan’s reply made me so mad I almost couldn’t see anymore; my blood pressure was too high.

“She’s fine.” He told him. “She was trying to sell to some old guy, and he came out of the house in a robe with his flag pole sticking out the front.”

The entire van next to me, filled with grown men, erupted into laughter along with the vehicle I was sitting in. I was the butt of every joke all day and sold nothing. I still got my $10.00 so I could afford to eat, but I had to take a “re-education” class and get counselled on how to do better tomorrow. By the time they were done with me, there was nothing open and I went to bed hungry.

I had enough cash to get a good breakfast, though and made up my mind that I wasn’t letting the bastards get me down. I was a good and professional sales person and I wasn’t going to let them take that from me.

With a full stomach, I embarked on a red-letter day. I cleared $300.00 and beat everyone else for sales. Of course, I owed them back nearly all of that $300.00 for the ten dollar advances, but the following day was payday so I handed over most of my winnings with a smile.

I had been calling my mom collect every night to check in with her. I never told her about the craziness because I didn’t want her to worry. She was so proud of my three-hundred dollar day. I told her that as soon as I had my first paycheck, I would purchase a phone card so that she didn’t have to take collect calls.

Unfortunately, my first paycheck was only about $80.00 because the rags I used, my half of the room rate and a couple of other items came out of it. I collapsed onto the bed. I was beginning to understand how Mary got into her predicament.

Flash forward a few weeks later and I still haven’t caught up what I owe and haven’t eaten a decent meal since I got there. Mr. G was in town that week and swung by to see me in an effort to keep his word to my dad. (He brought me a few bags of chips and some sodas, so I was way happier to see him than I thought I ever could be.)

His face fell at the sight of me. I had bags under my eyes from loss of sleep, and my skin was sallow from lack of nutrition.

“Hey sweetie.” He said. “Why don’t I take you to lunch? I know a good steak house not far from here and it’ll give us an opportunity to catch up.”

At this stage in my sales development, I wasn’t going to say no to that so off we went. I told him about Gina and Dan, because right after June left, they were back to sucking face and pretending to hide their affair. Gina had said that Dan told her he had no intention of going through with the wedding, he was just keeping June busy until he had “free-grazed” enough funds off the outfit for the two of them to run away… and she was ok with that, which disappointed the crap out of me.

After the long discussion, Mr. G sat back in his seat, took a deep breath and then leaned forward, clasping his hands together on the table in front of him,

“I’m going to tell you something, that I’ve never shared with anyone in the outfit before, so I’m going to need you to promise not to tell anyone.”

“I promise.” I told him.

“Good.” He said, taking a sip from his glass of tea. “I had a daughter your age once. I let her go join a traveling sales crew just like this one and she never came home. They lost her and to this day, no one knows what happened to her. I took this job so that I can keep an eye on nice people like yourself and keep them safe.”

“Which reminds me.” I interrupted. “What happened to the two kids who came with me? They were only here for a few hours.”

“Oh that.” He laughed. “They were lost in Atlanta. I met the brother at the airport when I arrived. He was holding a sign begging for money, so I stopped to see what his story was. Someone had stolen their belongings, and they were trying to find a way back to Oregon. Since we had a crew there and would be leaving in a few days, I offered to let them come along, as long as they acted like they were new hires. I put them up in the hotel room next to mine until we could connect with you and then get started on the next part. My deepest pain is knowing that my daughter might have needed help and there may have been no one there for her.”

I sat quietly processing this information, when Mr. G said something that changed my life forever.

“Listen sweetie, you only get one chance to live your life. You’re still young and the whole world is in front of you. One day you’ll be in your 50’s like me, and you’ll wonder where the time went. Don’t waste a single second of it making June any richer. And while we’re on the topic, I assure you Dan is very much planning to marry her, and your friend is willingly letting him use her because he gives her the answers she longs the most to hear. They ran Mary out of the outfit because they were done using her. She had become too much of an issue to be worth the pursuit anymore. When she left, it was me she called. She may have been run out, but she couldn’t make enough of you. I appreciate you helping her even though she had been willing to compromise you with that crazy cab ride across town. I don’t know why you’re here selling this product when the whole world is is waiting for you.”

After a moment of silence, he reached into his front suit coat pocket and took out a card and handed it to me.

“If you need anything, call me any time, night or day. If you should decide to go home, let me know and I’ll come get you and we’ll meet your parents somewhere.”

“Thanks Mr. G”. I told him, still looking at the card. “I just need some time to think about it.”

“Sounds like a plan.” He replied, winking. Then he signaled the waitress for a to go order, paid the bill, and then dropped me off at the hotel with the extra food and a hundred dollar bill in my pocket. My heart sank as he pulled away.

It was a Saturday night, (we didn’t work on Sundays), and everyone was up walking around the pool at the hotel, or standing and leaning on the balcony talking. As I started up the stairs to my room, I was greeted at the top by Gina, who had Dan’s arms around her.

“How was dinner?” She asked, genuinely wishing me well.

I looked at her, standing there with him and I realized these people were too foolish for me. I don’t know why I stayed as long as I did. I guess I just needed to prove something to myself. The truth was, I was traveling, but I saw nothing because I was too busy walking around trying to sell something dumb to people I didn’t know, and was too broke to even eat. Ridiculous!

So, I handed the to-go bag to Gina.

“It was great.” I answered. “This is for you. Good night.”

I went into the room, called Mr. G, and he told me he would pick me up in the morning and we’d go somewhere to call my mother and make arrangements for me to get home.

When the morning came, Mr. G was true to his word and was there before the sun came up. He drove me to another, better motel, paid for my room and then paid for me to make the call on a phone card. My mother was so happy I thought she was going to come through the phone and kiss Mr. G.

The gentleman was heading to Birmingham in the morning and said he would be happy to give them the hotel information so that they could be there to meet us. And it was set.

The next morning, I woke up in a beautiful hotel room to a cart full of all sorts of breakfast food. I totally gorged myself. Then I showered and got cleaned up to look nice for mom and dad. I was a mess, health-wise and I didn’t want to shock my mother.

I met Mr. G downstairs and thanked him for the breakfast. I had scarcely gotten it out of my mouth when my parents drove up. Mom hopped out of the car and hugged me so hard I thought I was going to pass out from the lack of air, but I was so happy to see her that I didn’t care.

We chatted with Mr. G for a bit, then my dad shook his hand and thanked him, and my mother hugged him and thanked him, and they got into the car.

“I don’t have enough good words in my vocabulary to say to you, Mr. G, but I truly love you. Thank you for taking care of me.”

He looked as if he were going to cry, then hugged me like a daughter.

“You go conquer the world now, sweetie. And don’t ever sell yourself short. You are incredibly bright and very mature for your age. Don’t let anyone push you around. You have my card. Please call me if you ever need anything.”

“I will” I told him, tears streaming over my cheeks as I got into the car, and we pulled away.

As my mother began her inquisition, I waved good-bye to that old man, hoping to see him again, but I never did. I lost the card and fortunately, never did need him again… but what a miraculous human being!

Thanks to him, I learned that you can’t let the perception of others cloud your own perception of things, and that sometimes, quitting isn’t failing, it’s giving yourself a promotion.