Just Letting The Weird Out

September 28, 2016 / Diane Henders / 62 Comments

All my life I’ve been a weirdo-magnet: If there are weirdos anywhere in the vicinity, they’ll unerringly seek me out and attach themselves to me. (Sometimes literally – more on that later.)

I used to think it was something about my face. Some label on my forehead that was invisible to me but glowed like an irresistible beacon to anyone looking at the world through weirdo-coloured glasses.

But this week while I was contemplating a pattern of knotholes in our fence that looks exactly like an evil face, I suddenly realized that I see faces everywhere. Sometimes when I’m sitting on the john I glimpse faces in the blotchy pattern of our bathroom floor tiles. I see faces on cars. I see faces on potatoes. This may be a little, erm… weird.

Then, as I sniffed the fall air, it occurred to me that autumn smells as though summer’s been wearing its underwear just a bit too long. You know; that funky aroma when something’s not quite rotten but it’s well on the way.

You already know I’m not a big fan of autumn, but that was a pretty weird thought even for me. (I’m also bothered by the fact that I referred to autumn’s ‘irresistible scent’ in that earlier post… and now it smells like funky undies? Yikes!)

So apparently I attract weirdos because I’m one myself.

I’d like to say that revelation bothers me, but it doesn’t. Weird is far more interesting than normal. I’m fascinated by people who harmlessly travel a few steps aside of the beaten path. Mind you, the ones that don’t even know there is a beaten path worry me; so I guess I’m not overly weird, as weirdos go.

Unlike the guy who attached himself to me when I was riding the C-train many years ago…

I glanced up and thought, “Uh-oh. That guy looks weird.”

Sure enough, he gravitated directly to my seat and sat down. Then, without speaking, he gently took my hand.

I’ve got pretty good people-radar and he seemed harmless, so instead of making a scene and/or breaking his fingers I dislodged his hand and said, “No, I don’t want to hold your hand.”

He just smiled and took my hand again. Didn’t do or say anything else; just sat there smiling off into space and holding my hand like a little kid.

So I thought, “Ah, what the hell.”

I went back to my book, and we rode downtown holding hands. His stop came before mine, and I was relieved when he did let go of my hand at last. But he wasn’t finished with his ritual. Reaching over, he gave two gentle tugs on my earlobe, then grasped my hand and moved it toward his ear. I gave two gentle tugs on his earlobe in return, and then he smiled sweetly and got off the train. Never said a word.

Definitely odd, but all in all it was kind of heartwarming.

So at least I’m not the weirdest weirdo on the planet, but it’s probably a good thing I blog so I can let the weird out in small weekly doses instead of letting it build up until I accost total strangers on public transit.

Have you got any harmless-weirdo stories?

* * *

New discussion over at the Virtual Backyard Book Club: A Rose By Any Other Name… How important are character names in fiction? Click here to have your say!

Attack Of The Killer T… Oh, Wait; That’s Been Done.

September 16, 2015 / Diane Henders / 49 Comments

They’re coming. They slowly fill our house like an inexorable tide, backing us into the corners while we battle them with knives and saucepans…

Okay; so they’re not exactly ‘killer’ tomatoes.

We’re about to get our first hard frost so we brought in most of the garden produce this past weekend. (The snow in August was just a warning. This time they’re serious: Predicting -4C. Brrr.)

We measure the production of our garden in gallons because we transport it all home in 5-gallon pails. Our weekend haul was 10 gallons of green tomatoes (fortunately they ripen easily indoors), 15 gallons of carrots, and 60 gallons of potatoes. We could probably feed a small town.

But we can’t help ourselves. Every year I say to Hubby, “You know, we’re planting an awful lot of potatoes.”

And he says, “Uh-huh”, and keeps on planting.

I don’t really try to stop him. For a foodie like me, a plethora of potatoes is pretty close to heaven. When we dig them in the fall, Hubby maintains a stoic silence while I exclaim: “Oh, wow, look at this one! Now that’s a potato! Look at the size of this one! Oh, look, look, there are tons of them under here! Woohoo!” On and on I go with boundless enthusiasm until we’ve extracted the last tuber. You’d think I’d never seen a potato before.

It’s the same with the zucchini and tomatoes and beans and everything else throughout the summer. Chortling over the plenitude of produce, I drag Hubby hither and yon in the garden babbling, “Look at this one! And this one! Look how big/shiny/beautiful/(fill in superlative here) this one is!”

It’s not until I’m into the umpteenth hour of standing in the kitchen chopping and blanching and canning that the thrill begins to fade.

Yes, that is a 10-gallon pot full of carrots.

That’s when I begin to remind myself that there are three supermarkets within a mile of my house. I could just trot over and buy whatever I wanted throughout the winter instead of going to all this trouble. And if I wanted to ogle large quantities of vegetables I could go and stand in the produce department.

But it’s not the same. They’re not my vegetables. Supermarket potatoes are generic. Ours are Norlands and Vikings and Purple Caribes and French Fingerlings and Yukon Gems. We line them up and do taste tests and debate production levels with the seriousness of a UN conference. (Potato taste-test winners thus far are the French Fingerlings and Norlands, but more testing is required.)

And despite my aching back, I know that in a few months I’ll eagerly yield to the seduction of the hortiporn once again.

Hey, if it made sense it wouldn’t be a hobby, right?

* * *

P.S. Just because I know you’ve come to expect dirty jokes on my blog, here you go:

Q: Why do gardeners make excellent gossip columnists?

A: Because they’re always digging up dirt.

And:

Q: Why did the gardeners get kicked out of the church picnic?

A: Because they were telling dirty stories.

And finally:

Did you hear about the 1-900 line for gardeners? When you call in, a happy hoer will talk dirty for you.

I could go on, but I wouldn’t want WordPress to censor me again for all these dirty jokes…

I’m Such A Snotty Princess

May 20, 2015May 20, 2015 / Diane Henders / 42 Comments

Hubby brought home a cold last week. As I mentioned several years ago, we generally don’t share viruses because I’m probably a Neanderthal, but this one seems to have targeted the weaker homo sapiens part of my genetic makeup.

Right now I’m at the stage where my throat and lungs are on fire but I’m not coughing yet. I’m still clinging to the idiot hope that maybe the Rhinovirus Fairy will pass me by instead of scooping out my brain and replacing it with snot.

But I think she (or ‘he’, to be fair) has already begun the process, because in the last few days I’ve developed a disturbing tendency to shuffle to a halt and stand staring into space for several seconds before saying, “Come on, brain, you can do this!” aloud. It seems to work – I usually remember what I was trying to do, but it tends to draw wary looks if I do it outside the privacy of my home.

Meanwhile, I’m sucking on zinc/echinacea/Vitamin C lozenges and drinking hot lime juice with honey. (I prefer lime instead of the traditional lemon because then I can pretend I’m drinking a hot margarita instead of a medicinal beverage.) I don’t expect this to cure or in any way improve my cold, but at least it gives me something to do while I wait.

When I sat down to write this post I racked my virus-laden brain for something funny to say about the common cold, but you know what? I got nothin’. Colds suck. Or rather, blow. Great soggy snot-balls.

So instead, here are a few things that made me laugh this week:

My blogging buddy Carl D’Agostino’s cartoon: https://carldagostino.wordpress.com/2015/05/18/compulsive-behavior-by-carl-dagostino/

My nephew’s comment about men’s locker rooms: “Yep, no matter which way you turn, you’re gonna see something you really didn’t want to see.” That reminded us both of this comic from The Oatmeal and made us laugh uproariously. (Scroll down to the bottom of The Oatmeal’s page for the one about the locker room.)

Then there’s this picture sent to me by one of my readers, Sue W., because she saw it on Facebook and knew it would make me laugh. (The misspelling of ‘potato’ is neither hers nor mine.)

That’ll make you think twice about digging in the garden…

I’m hoping the person who wrote the caption meant ‘love this’ in the philosophical sense, not the physical. But probably only my mind would ever latch onto that critical distinction.

This Twitter message was laughable because it was such a lame attempt at marketing from somebody who clearly knows me… wait for it… NOT AT ALL:

Totally me. Not.

Let me count the ways this made me laugh:

They clearly put so much time and effort into crafting their marketing message. Ten seconds with Google Translate might have helped.
It’s pink. Anybody who knows me (even slightly) knows that I’ve never in my life worn or even owned anything pink.
It has a princess crown on it. Is there anything about me that could in any way be construed as princess-like?
It has a cutesy heart on it. I’m totally gonna wear this with my biking leathers and flaming-skull helmet.
And hell yeah, I’m going to click on a random link sent by some spammer just because the T-shirt has my first name on it. Nice try, guys. But thanks for the laughs.

What made you chuckle this week? And/or what’s your favourite cold remedy?

A Super Pickle Tickle

May 13, 2015 / Diane Henders / 25 Comments

Last week I asked if anybody else was harbouring unusual mementos in their home. My blogging buddy Carrie Rubin stepped up to the plate (pun intended) with her Super Pickle, and kindly offered to let me use him in a blog post:

Super Pickle in all his glory.

That reminded me of yet another oddball item in my house: a leering wooden zucchini.

Quite a bit more disturbing than Super Pickle.

Needless to say, the comic possibilities were endless for a woman of my twisted imagination. So many phallic vegetables, so few words allotted to a single blog post…

I considered writing a flash-fiction zucchini-on-pickle romance. After all, Super Pickle wears his rainbow tights with such pride and panache. But he’s so innocently goofy and endearing, I couldn’t bring myself to roll out any hide-the-pickle jokes.

If I was only writing about my freaky double-jointed zucchini I’d go for it without hesitation, because let’s face it: that deranged smile that could mean anything from an invitation for acts better left undescribed to an offer of cake made with his own pulverised progeny. (Mmm, and now I’m hungry for zucchini cake.)

In any case, I’d never tweak a pickle without knowing its background, so more research was required. I vaguely remember Super Pickle from decades ago, but I guess I was living under a rock in the 70s and 80s because I had to go and look him up on the internet to see what he was all about.

I did that with much trepidation, cringing at the thought of finding photos that might defile my virginal eyeballs when I searched for “super pickle”. Much to my disappointment surprise, everything came up absolutely clean. Either somebody has sneakily installed a content filter on my computer, or Super Pickle is beyond reproach.

And he’s still popular. I even came across a fan forum where people described their attachments to Super Pickle and their ongoing search for Super Pickle toys: http://www.inthe80s.com/toys/superpickle.shtml. Carrie, there’s a retail opportunity for you!

Anyway, in the end I discovered that Super Pickle had his beginnings as the star of a 1972 children’s pop-up book so, considering his G-rated origins, any off-colour references on my part would be totally inappropriate. Which, by an amazing coincidence, is the title of my last blog compilation; but still. Out of respect for Super Pickle, I’m going to defy the almost-irresistible compulsion to make a crack about pop-up pickles.

Instead, I’ll leave you with a pickle-related joke:

Chatting over the fence with her neighbour one day, a woman remarks on the tomatoes in his garden. “They’re so ripe already,” she marvels. “How do you always get the first red tomatoes on the block?”

He leans closer to whisper, “I have a secret. Every night after everybody else is in bed I sneak out to the garden wearing a trench coat and nothing else. I flash the tomatoes and they blush red! You should try it with your garden.”

Inspired, the woman follows his advice. A week later they’re chatting over the fence again and her neighbour inquires, “So how are your tomatoes?”

“Well, they’re still nothing special. But you should see the size of the cucumbers!”

See you in the produce department! (I’ll be the one eyeing the cucumbers and snickering.)

Funny As A Turnip

February 11, 2015 / Diane Henders / 43 Comments

A few weeks ago I noted in passing that some vegetables are funnier than others. So that got me thinking about the innate amusement value of produce.

At first I thought it might be the shape that determines the joke factor. After all, oranges are spherical and pretty boring, whereas bananas are oddly shaped and intrinsically funny. But that might be a subconscious bias on my part. Bananas come with a lot of psychological baggage as a result of their frequent misuse for purposes best left unmentioned…

Wait, why are you snickering? I was referring to the classic ‘slipping-on-a-banana-peel’ pratfall. What did you think I was talking about?

Okay, never mind; I’ll drop the fake indignation. You know me too well. But to keep this discussion pseudo-scientific, I’ll omit the phallic symbols that trigger a chortle-bias in my puerile brain. No bananas, cucumbers, or zucchini.

So let’s take turnips. Nobody in their right mind could assign a sexual connotation to a turnip. And if you’re about to inform me otherwise, please… just don’t. That’s the kind of thing no amount of brain-bleach can wipe from my mind. Not to mention it’ll make me snicker every time I go through the produce department.

I find turnips innocently funny. ‘Turnip’. It’s such a lumpish, stolid word. It’s the sumo wrestler of vegetables. Maybe it tickles my funnybone because one of my favourite sayings is ‘Strong like ox; smart like turnip’. Or maybe it’s only because other words beginning with ‘tur’ make me giggle, so turnips are funny by association. For instance, just try saying these words out loud without cracking a smile: ‘Turkey’. ‘Turgid’. ‘Turd’. (If you’re reading this at work, you might want to skip the ‘out loud’ part… but I dare you…)

Whatever the reason, turnips are a lot funnier than, say, lettuce.

If amusement value was influenced by shape alone, leaf lettuce should be a good candidate for some laughs. Ruffles and green colouring – it should be funny, right? (I find green funnier than red or yellow, too, but that’s a subject for another post… or possibly for incarceration and intense psychoanalysis.)

But no; lettuce isn’t funny. Maybe it’s because amusing things rarely happen while you’re eating lettuce. It’s at best a duty and at worst a punishment. I usually enjoy its crisp crunchiness and the fact that it’s good for me, but it doesn’t make me giggle. And if I want crisp and crunchy, I’d rather eat potato chips. Or if it has to be crisp, crunchy, and green, give me dill pickles. Or what the hell; dill-pickle-flavoured potato chips.

But back to my rigorous scientific analysis.

Broccoli is funny: It’s green (see, green is funny), and its resemblance to little trees is amusing. Plus, if you’re into childish humour, it stinks even when it’s fresh, and post-digestion it’s lethal if you get caught in the blast nimbus.

But just to mess up the ‘green and oddly-shaped’ theory, I also think persimmons are funny. There shouldn’t be anything intrinsically funny about a round yellow-orange fruit, but ‘persimmon’ is a giggle-worthy word in itself. When I was a kid I thought it was a made-up word; a colloquialism for a fruit that surely must have a more dignified name that the adults used. And persimmons have those little crispy-brown tutus around their stems.

Come to think of it, ‘tutu’ starts with ‘tu’…

Which fruits/veggies do you find funniest?

Something Wicked This Way Comes

October 29, 2014 / Diane Henders / 31 Comments

They’re coming for us.

Leathery features twisted in horrifying grimaces. Glistening eyeballs barely contained in lidless sockets. Grotesque warty protuberances erupting from wrinkled reptilian skin.

I’m not talking about the usual Halloween ghosties and ghoulies. These aren’t human beings in masks and makeup. This is the real thing; a nightmare come alive.

Yes, I’m talking about potatoes.

How would you like to find this when you stick your hand in the potato bin?

Or this?

These are last year’s potatoes – we didn’t finish them up before we dug the new ones, and now apparently they’ve decided to reproduce all on their own. They’re actually growing new little potatoes inside the old ones.

I’m totally creeped out. It’s like one of those pod-people horror movies, only it’s happening in our potato bin. And just in time for Halloween, too.

Maybe we should put these out on our front porch instead of a jack-o-lantern. I bet that would cut down on the trick-or-treaters (or, as we often call them, Halloweeners, but that word always makes me think of a semi-artificial meat product all gussied up in a little costume).

I like Halloween. Its origins are shrouded in mystery and nobody remembers or cares whether it was originally a religious or secular occasion. It celebrates absolutely nothing, and does it with silly costumes and free candy. What’s not to like?

We need more days like Halloween, but I think we adults should get goodies along with the kids. Maybe candy for the kids and booze for the parents, so the adults will be sufficiently mellow when their little darlings consume the entire contents of their candy bags and become hyperactive human cannonballs with projectile vomiting. I don’t have kids of my own, but an overstimulated child with a belly full of candy sounds like the world’s scariest horror movie to me.

Hubby and I used to stay home and hand out treats, but for the last few years we’ve been Halloween grinches. We vacate the house around five o’clock and go to the bar to shoot pool, nicely avoiding both the parade of kids and our subsequent pig-out on leftover chocolate bars. (‘Cause you wouldn’t want to run out of candy, right? So you have to buy lots. And it only makes sense to buy the kinds you like.)

But maybe this year we should stay home and hand out potatoes. They’re the perfect Halloween treat: delicious, nutritious, and scary as hell.

Anybody else harbouring mutant vegetables? What are your Halloween traditions?

Hortiporn Addict

December 4, 2013 / Diane Henders / 47 Comments

I’ve succumbed to my own sordid vices again. I really thought I had overcome them this fall, but I was wrong. One glimpse was all it took.

The seductive cover photo made my heart pound. I carried the magazine home with trembling hands and smuggled it into my pile of innocuous reading material. I swore to myself I’d be strong this time. I wouldn’t let my base instincts overcome my knowledge of what was good and right.

But the illicit thrill drew me irresistibly.

Just one look, I promised myself. I won’t let it consume me this time.

But one page led to another. Each photo was more tempting than the last. Each coaxed and promised, “I could be yours. Yours alone. Imagine running your hands over my smooth, glossy skin. Imagine my sweet taste on your lips…”

All that firm flesh; all those provocative layouts…

Omigod, look at the size of that…!

And then it was too late. All my good intentions evaporated and I fell straight back into the waiting embrace of my worst weakness.

Yes, I’m ashamed to say I was drooling over hortiporn again.

It’s sheer coincidence the catalogue fell open to carrots and cucumbers.

I swear I’m addicted to seed catalogues. They’re terrible things. The vegetables are so big and beautiful and blemish-free. The flowers are so lush and brilliant. And the worst part is, I know damn well the photos are just as air-brushed and artificially enhanced as pinups in a skin mag. I’ll never grow anything that beautiful in my garden. (Yes, I’m talking about vegetables. Jeez. Everybody knows you can’t grow hot guys in the garden… can you…? ‘Cause I’m willing to try if there’s a possibility…)

Every year I get sucked in. The snow swirls outside, and I curl up on the couch and dream of all the delicious and wonderful goodies I’ll grow next year. I forget all the hard work of planting and hoeing and harvesting. Those vivid colours drive the memories of hard labour straight out of my head, and I get out my pen and start making my list.

And the catalogues come earlier each year. I got this one a little more than a month after I finished planting the *ahem* several hundred fall flower bulbs I *ahem* accidentally ordered last spring. I was sure the memory of planting all those bulbs would dull the lustre of this year’s hortiporn.

Not a chance. One glance was all it took. I remembered how tasty the summer’s harvest was. And how beautiful it was, at least to my eyes:

I know; it looks like work. But it was worth it!

So the seed companies win again. This week’s catalogue was only the first salvo in their attack, and my defences are already breached. Soon more temptation will arrive from at least two other companies. Then the spring bulbs and nursery stock catalogues will come. And in the depths of January, I’ll cave and order another couple of hundred dollars worth of seeds and plants.

But I can quit whenever I want to.

Honest.

Most people dream of tropical vacations. I dream of this.

* * *

Woohoo! Book 7: SPY, SPY AWAY has just been released on Smashwords, and I hope it’ll show up today on Amazon. (Members of my New Book Notification List will get an email as soon as it’s available.) To celebrate, I’m giving away a signed paperback copy. If you’d like a chance (or two) to win it, pop over to my Book Giveaway page.

Thinking About Drinking

September 5, 2012 / Diane Henders / 27 Comments

It’s autumn, and I need a drink.

It’s partly because autumn is my least favourite season, but mainly because the crabapples are ripe. If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you may remember I mentioned I love food and I’m helplessly addicted to gardening.

The result of those traits is a back yard containing an apple tree, a crabapple tree, grapevines, raspberries, gooseberries, rhubarb, haskaps (a very cool variety of honeysuckle with fruit like blueberries on steroids), strawberries, asparagus, a hazelnut tree, and a greenhouse full of tomatoes and peppers. My “real” garden is about 3,000 square feet of vegetables outside the city.

The back yard in mid-summer when it still looked nice

The star of the backyard show is the crabapple tree. Every year, it droops under the weight of its crop – deliciously sweet-tart, juicy blush-pink apples. (The variety is Rescue, in case there are any other hungry gardeners out there.) Every year, I cart away a couple of wheelbarrow-loads of crabapples. I make jelly, fruit leather, applesauce, and spiced crabapples. Then if there are leftovers, I ferment them into hard cider.

This process begins with an explosion of pulverized crabapples and ends with a product that ranges from rotgut to rocket fuel to rot (if I don’t get a high enough alcohol content).

Juicing was a laborious process until a few years ago when Hubby bought me one of those newfangled kick-ass juicers – yet another reason why he’s on the best-husband-ever list. The new juicer works like a dream… except for one thing. No matter how fast I slam the pusher into the chute after adding a handful of apples, the shredding action is so aggressive that bits spray everywhere. The first time I used it, I was picking apple flecks out of my eyebrows and off the ceiling.

This year I wised up and did the juicing on the back deck where I could hose everything off afterward. (The neighbours didn’t even bat an eye. After the radish/toilet incident, they’re probably afraid to ask.)

Once all the juicing is done, it’s a glorious exercise in hope. What yeast should I use this year? What part of the process will I tweak to get the absolutely perfect batch of cider? Then there’s fermentation, racking, fining, bottling with just the right amount of added sugar to get a delicious sparkle in the finished product.

Then there are months of anticipation. It takes about a year before the final product is ready.

Then comes the first taste… and the final classification: rotgut, rocket fuel, or rot. But I keep hoping somehow, some year, I’ll magically produce something drinkable. Well, something other people might consider drinkable. I drink it anyway…

But in the mean time, all that work and hope has made me thirsty. Think I’ll crack open a bought beer. At least I know it’ll be good.

What’s your favourite autumn beverage?

Oh, and loosely related to gardening: I can’t believe I actually managed to snap a bee in mid-flight in my garden a few days ago:

Bee in flight just below the smaller sunflower

Heeere, Mr. Gopher…

August 8, 2012July 30, 2020 / Diane Henders / 15 Comments

Warning: This article contains graphic descriptions from an active zone of conflict. It may be disturbing for sensitive readers.

Tensions were high as hostilities escalated this week in the West Garden. In the past two weeks of conflict, dozens of innocent carrots and potatoes have lost their lives. This week the death of two promising young head lettuce plants caused me to declare a jihad against pocket gophers.

After a brief attempt at mediation last week, negotiations broke down when the gophers walked away from the table. (It so happened the table was appetizingly laid with Warfarin, but I see no reason to let facts get in the way of a dramatic story.)

The point is, I offered the gophers the opportunity to vacate the disputed territory or die an honourable death on their own terms, and they refused to do either.

This week, I found more impudent gopher mounds and more dead vegetables. And I got serious.

I’m beginning to feel like Bill Murray in Caddyshack. I laughed when he sculpted a squirrel out of plastic explosive. I thought his deranged expression was funny.

Little did I know that this week, I’d feel that expression on my own face. And I’d be seriously wondering how he procured the C4.

However, I’d like to think I’m still slightly saner than to blow my entire garden to hell just for sake of eradicating some pocket gophers. I went with a subtler method: poison gas.

Gassing gophers was a whole new experience for me. Growing up on the farm, the rifle was always handy by the back door if we needed to get rid of animal pests. (Yes, those were the days before gun control.) So it was with trepidation that I read the warnings and instructions on the packet of innocuous-looking little cylinders.

The instructions helpfully described how to find the horseshoe-shaped mound that indicated the location of the main burrow, and provided all sorts of useful advice about the danger of burns and poison gas inhalation. Hooray.

But I was a woman on the edge. This was a Holy War. Nothing would stop me.

I found the burrow. I dug down and identified the direction of the tunnel. I donned my heavy leather gloves (to prevent burns) and ascertained the direction of the wind (to prevent gassing myself).

I test-fitted the cartridge in the tunnel to make sure I wouldn’t smother the fuse when I put it in…

And nearly shit my pants when I lit the first fuse.

You know how in the cartoons, the fuse makes this hissing, spitting noise and sprays a rooster-tail of sparks? You know how the cartoon characters get all freaked out when the flame zips along the fuse ‘way faster than they expected?

It was exactly like that.

Turns out they only guarantee a minimum of five seconds on the fuse. I spent approximately two of those seconds gaping at the smoking, spitting cylinder of death in my hand before stuffing it in the tunnel, shoving dirt over top and running like hell.

All in all, it went exactly as planned, but with a good deal more adrenaline.

I won’t know until next week whether I got him. But if I find more mounds, I’ll have no choice but to go Rambo on his ass.

So if you see a deranged-looking middle-aged woman standing out in her garden at sunrise armed with a compound bow and broadhead-tipped arrows, just smile, nod, and back away slowly.

Heeere, Mr. Gopher…

Scarred By Cabbages

April 28, 2011 / Diane Henders / 6 Comments

Many thanks to Charles Gulotta over at Mostly Bright Ideas for giving me the inspiration for today’s post. His “Painfully Employed” Part 1 and Part 2 made me think of my most memorable and psychologically devastating childhood job: selling cabbages door to door.

It’s okay. Go ahead and laugh. I can laugh about it now, too, almost forty years later.

I grew up on a farm in Manitoba. When my older brother was a pre-teen, he sold potatoes in town. He did the digging and bagging, Mom drove him to town, and he got to keep the money. I’m pretty sure this wasn’t his idea. I’m guessing it was an attempt by my parents to nurture entrepreneurial spirit. I suspect they succeeded in nurturing a lifelong hatred of all things potato-sales-related.

I was more than three years younger, an impressionable age. I was staggered by the sheer abundance of wealth that poured into his pockets from this endeavour. It was probably about five bucks in total, but my allowance was ten cents a week. Woooeeeeee!

Being the pain-in-the-ass kid that I was, I badgered my mother for equal fiscal opportunity. Little did I know.

It was a good year for growing cabbage that year. Breathless with anticipation of untold riches, I trailed my long-suffering mother as she brought the cabbages in from the garden, weighed them, and marked prices on them. I was too young to carry more than one cabbage at a time, and multiplication was beyond me, but I made up for these deficiencies with sheer enthusiasm.

Reality intruded on my dream once we arrived in town. I had to actually walk up to a house, ring the doorbell, and talk to a stranger. And try to sell them a cabbage.

Girl Scouts have it easy. They’re selling cookies. Who doesn’t like cookies? And the cookies are all neatly packaged in attractive boxes. Try selling somebody a wormy cabbage and see how fast you pay for those new uniforms.

But perhaps I’m bitter.

Amazingly, I did manage to sell a few cabbages. Maybe my customers felt sorry for this little kid clutching a cabbage bigger than her head. Or maybe they were just paying me to go away. For the few cents that I was charging, it was probably a good investment.

I lost interest in cabbage sales with remarkable speed. And I remain scarred for life by the memory of trying to convince people to buy something that they didn’t need, want, or even like. I never worked in retail again. To this day, the words “sales career” send a cold chill down my spine.

But if some little kid tries to sell me something, I usually buy.

What’s your worst job ever?