Passin' it On

Yesterday was Take Your Child to Work Day, and for the first time since Joey was little, I had a child to take: Trinity.  She and I went to the courthouse and joined other Hillsborough women lawyers and their kids for the morning—touring the courthouse and watching justice at work.  We also saw a very entertaining mock trial involving pirates.  Trinity was quite excited to be on the jury.  After lunch, we set off to Brooksville for an estate sale.

During the drive, we talked about a number of things, including Take Your Child to Work Day.

“Who invented it?” she asked.

“My grandmother,” I answered confidently.

“Nah-ah,” she said.  I couldn’t see her face, but the tone of her voice more than conveyed her disbelief.

I explained how once upon a time, when I was Trinity’s age, my grandmother occasionally took me to work with her.  This was long before Take Our Daughters to Work Day.  My grandmother was a public health nurse in our rural Louisiana parish, and back when I was small, there were only a handful of nurses covering the whole Parish.  My grandmother (“Miss Betty” to her patients) was their leader.

The days that she took me to work with her were very special.  For one thing, it was a rare chance to spend time alone with her—at home, I always had my sisters competing with me for attention.   When we were at the office, I got to do cool things like stapling papers, filing index cards, and helping keep the rosters for the clinics.  We spent a lot of time out of the office, though, visiting patients all over the parish in Grandma’s Chevy.  She always left one of the windows slightly cracked, so that we wouldn’t be overcome by carbon monoxide.   I don’t know if that was a legitimate concern, but we were protected, in any case.

We would travel down winding, tree-lined dirt roads without so much as a compass, and somehow eventually find the people we were visiting.  If we happened upon a country store along the way, we’d stop for cold Cokes.  Back in those days, Coke came one way: in glass bottles.  Grandma kept a bottle opener on her keychain “just in case.”  Once we got where we were going, Grandma would disappear into the house to visit her patient while I stayed on the porch visiting whoever was there.

I felt like hot stuff on those days—people would fuss over me and ask me if I wanted be a nurse like my grandmother.  Some days I did, and some days I wanted to be a doctor, but I knew I wanted to help people feel better, like my grandma did.  Either way, I knew I wanted a career outside the home.

Years later, when I was entering high school, I was planning my schedule for ninth grade.  I could choose one elective, but our high school was limited to three: Home Economics, Shop and Typing.  The first wasn’t even an option—I had zero interest in Home Ec.  I’d have taken Shop, but didn’t want to be the only girl in the class.  I was left with typing, which I figured would come in handy at some point.  (Note to my younger readers—this was back in the Dark Ages, before everyone had a keyboard within easy reach.)  I turned in my schedule and didn’t give it another thought, until I was called into the principal’s office the next week.   Mr. George, the Principal, had an issue with my elective choice.

“Ah, Baby, I see you don’t have Home Ec scheduled,” he said.  Maybe he thought I’d been confused by the scheduling process.

“No, I’m taking typing instead,” I answered.

“But all the girls take Home Ec,” he replied helpfully.

“Well this girl isn’t.  It’s an elective, and I’m electing not to take it.” Poor Mr. George—he wasn’t used to eighth grade girls being so assertive.   Nothing he could say would convince me to change my plans, even throwing in that I needed Home Ec.

Knowing that my grandmother and my mother, who also became a public health nurse, had careers outside the home gave me any extra confidence I needed that my family and I would be able to survive despite my lack of Home Ec.   Aside from that, I had an innate sense of outrage that men seemed to have the easier paths in life.  I wasn’t going to fit into somebody else’s mold for what girls should do.

Yesterday after lunch, one of the judges asked Trinity if she was going to go to work with me that afternoon.  I explained that we’d be going to an estate sale instead, where I would teach her the art of negotiating.

I learned negotiating at the feet of the master—my grandmother’s sister, Aunt Ruth.  Before she retired, Aunt Ruth had worked at the Sears in Alexandria, the biggest city near my small hometown.  She had been the head of the foundations department, which sounded quite risque’ to a nine year old girl.  Aunt Ruth had the added mystique of being divorced—an unheard-of condition in Grandma’s strict, Baptist family.  History was later rewritten so that Aunt Ruth was a widow.

Grandma would pack us up for overnights at Aunt Ruth’s house.  She had a small, modern house in the big city of Pineville.  Early on Friday and Saturday mornings, we’d hit the neighborhood garage sales.  Aunt Ruth loved her some garage sales!  My sisters and I, encouraged by our grandfather, would giggle about Aunt Ruth’s frugality.  But as much amusement as it gave me at the time, I picked up some very valuable lessons in negotiation from Aunt Ruth’s garage sale shopping.

Years later, Bunny started going to garage sales.  I resisted at first, but soon joined in.  He would stand back, gape-jawed, as I’d walk away with items he’d have paid at least 50% more for.  On one of my bad days.  He got as much fun from watching me wheel-and-deal as he did from going to the sales.   When my daddy came to visit last year, we found a willing accomplice in our treasure hunts.

So now, I’m passing my skills on to a new generation.  Once we got to the site, we starting looking for the things that interested us.  There were TONS of things, but most were way overpriced.   The seller wasn’t the actual owner of the property, but one of those companies that comes and sells all your junk for you.   Getting good deals at those kinds of sales—particularly on the first day—is difficult, because the mark-up is high and the person running the sale doesn’t have much incentive to slash prices.

Almost immediately, Trinity found a box of knitting supplies—various sizes of needles, yarn and other stuff.  Her eyes lit up.

“I’ve been wanting to knit!” she said excitedly.  I looked at the box, which didn’t have a price, and took a quick inventory. 

“They’ll probably want $20 for it, but they’ll take $10.”

“That’s a good deal for all this stuff!”  She, like Bunny, was an easy mark for these folks.

“No it’s not.  $5 is a good deal--$10 is what an amateur would pay.”

“But I AM an amateur!”

“Yes, but I’ll teach you the secrets.”   Then I told her what to say.  She’s got enough savvy going that I knew she’d throw in the appropriate body language and eye contact.  She was dubious about the script I gave her, and insisted that I practice with her before she approached the seller.

I sent her on her way with the box of knitting supplies and continued browsing the overpriced artwork.  She was back in less than five minutes, empty-handed.

“Well?” I asked.  I knew from her expression that she’d closed the deal.

“I did it!  $5!! I can’t believe it!!” She was full of glee as she explained how the deal went down.

“So where’s your box?”

“I left it with the lady so that I don’t have to carry it around.”  Ah, my heart melted.  Such a smart little grasshopper!  Then I threw in some extra advice for the next time.

As I was taking her home last night, Daddy called.  I told him about our day, particularly the estate sale.  He’d probably been to garage sales with Aunt Ruth as a child, too, and he told Trinity, almost verbatim, some of the things I’d told her.

“That’s what Nana said!” she shouted from the back seat.  We all had a good laugh, and I’m sure that Aunt Ruth was smiling down upon us: three generations of negotiators that she’d trained.