This is gonna be long, as if that’s unusual for me 😉

“As a single young woman with 3 children and deserted by her husband (and 0 child support) Mary Kay was a God – send. Did I mention I was insanely shy. This business helped me grow personally, many happy life long customers and teams of business women. I never had to stress about a good running car, I earned 14+”

As much as I slag on my own mother here, there, and elsewhere (decades of emotional and psychological abuse tend to color your thoughts just a touch) there was a lot to admire about her. She had been a school teacher, as women of her generation often were. She was married at 21 to her high school sweetheart, my father.

She was widowed at 41 with 6 children ranging in ages from 19 to 6 (me). My father had no life insurance and no assests except for a lockbox with his (admittedly quite impressive) poker winnings in it. She hadn’t worked full-time since my oldest sister was born, never learned to drive, never had her own money since her college days because my father was an old-school alpha male who regarded the family finances as man stuff. Shame about the 4 heart attacks, including the literal widowmaker.

She too was hella shy, and grieving, and desperate. We lived off Dad’s poker winnings while she applied for every job that she could walk to or take the bus to. Most turned her down because she was overeducated. All she could get was work at a Hallmark store. The pay wasn’t great so she worked a lot of hours, She had to learn to budget and balance a checkbook. She managed to shelter and feed us as she saved up for a car; my teenage brothers taught HER to drive in the junky Jeep Wagoneer our father had bought from a guy who knew a guy. That was one car. It was big and easy to count.

She finally was able to get her own car because one of my brothers needed the Jeep for school and work (the other was driving a string of lemons he bought with his own earnings). Her first car was a 1986 Ford Escort which was probably the cheapest car on the market at the time. It didn’t have air conditioning or a tape player, but it was hers. She had scrimped and saved and worked extra hours to afford it because THIS IS WHAT WE CALL WORKING.

That makes two cars. The Escort was way smaller than the Jeep, but still quite tangible.

We ate a lot of generic packaged food (back when it still came in the white cans with black lettering) and never had the nice toilet paper or real butter. I was basically a latchkey kid from age 9 because my siblings were so much older and had their own jobs, friends, lives. But by golly whenever one of us had a school event or something else important, she was there. She got us to doctors when we were sick, made Halloween costumes, shopped for prom gowns, hosted birthday and graduation parties.

The owner of the store she worked at was impressed by how hard she worked and how willing she was to put extra time in, because THAT IS WHAT WE CALL WORKING and promoted her to manager of a second store that he owned. That meant a better salary for fewer hours; we were allowed to use the air conditioner a little more and move up to brand-name vegetables. She turned the first Escort in on lease and got a second in 1988, which had AC and a tape deck. Living, baby.

That makes three cars, two of which she picked out and paid for herself by working her ass off. At some point in the 80s the Jeep just kind of fell apart and my brother took it to the junkyard, and we all went out to a restaurant on the money he got for it.

After a couple years she managed to land an office job, where she had bitchy coworkers who made her come home crying but she stuck it out because she was finally making a livng wage. She outlasted them and became a prop and mainstay of that workplace because THIS IS WHAT WE CALL WORKING. She paid off the mortgage and the second Escort and we finally had actual butter and nice toilet paper.

All done by her hard work and patience, with zero harrassment of strangers, recruitment into pyramid schemes, or trinkets.

“A lot of red grand ams!”

Four cars. The fourth was a 2000 Dodge Neon she bought out of desperation because the second Escort was totalled in an accident and they weren’t made any more, and the Neon was the cheapest small car on the market. Old habits die hard. It was the car I learned to drive on.

“But every two years it was fresh, new, and no break downs with a car full of kids.. My boys learned to drive in a pink Cadillac.”

Every teenage boy’s dream (rolleyes). Who cares about a Mustang or pickup truck. Ain’t no babe magnet like a Grandma car with a Mary Kay license plate (and a boyfriend’s mom who’ll try to make you over and sell you stuff because you’re too young to recruit).

“More importantly they saw their mom fail and get back up again,”

Pfft, they could have learned that from Chumbawumba.

“with the support of the best company and genuine supportive people. They learned ethics from watching me working with an ethical company.”

Ethics how? As Frosty points out, “never accept a no” isn’t ethical. It’s annoying when you’re trying to force makeup on someone and life-threateningly dangerous when it comes to refusing sex, or drugs, or getting in a car with someone drunk off their ass…

Was their mother at their basketball games? Did she take pictures on prom night and gush over how beautiful their dates were? Did she teach them how to budget money, balance a checkbook, clean, do laundry, sew buttons, sacrifice what you want in favor of what you need? Can they cook basic meals, do handyman stuff? Do they have fond memories of her, or was she just some nebulous source of things who was always on the phone or at a meeting?

We only had four cars – the Jeep, two Escorts (one was maroon and the other navy blue), and the Neon. 1+2+1=4. But in spite of the mental scars we all have happy memories of her and each other and we all learned the same work ethic and how to adult so we were ready to face the world in all the way she wasn’t, because she cared enough about us not to want us to flail around as she had to when my father died.

Oh, and in 2017 I bought a Crosstrek because the Neon was starting to fall apart. I went to the dealership, picked out the one I wanted, financed it with my fabulous credit, made 5 years worth of payments out of my savings that I got through WHAT WE CALL WORKING, and it became mine. It’s not owned by some greedy corporation who can take it back if I don’t live up to some arbitrary standard, I can keep it, trade it in, donate it, sell it, or let it sit in my driveway and rot, but no one can take it away from me… unless I let the insurance lapse or something… which I wouldn’t because thanks to my mother I know to pay my bills before I spend money on luxury… like makeup.

One. One Crosstrek. Her name is Christine and I have a steering wheel cover with carrots on it.

Sorry, I can’t get past the face! What in the Halloween happened???? I’d sue my plastic surgeon!!! There is no concentrated time. Time is time. “a good salesman in any profession” another meaningless word salad. You are either a salesman or not. There are not various professions. Whether I sell cars, recruit people, am a pharmaceutical rep, etc. I’m still a salesperson. A professional salesperson can sell any product. Anyway, I’ll quit nitpicking another horribly written, adnauseum letter. Does she even know people have retirement checks with medical and dental benefits? Does she even realize she missed the boat financially?