Many years ago, my mother helped me move to Cape Cod. We found a one-room apartment and spent a week furnishing it with stuff from flea markets and yard sales.
"Ma," I said, "there are lots of yard sales at the touristy rental cottages. We'll find great deals."
"You think I want someone's used sheets?"
"Everything we buy at a yard sale is used."
"If it's from a tourist," she snapped, "it's used. From a local, it's an antique."
I received lots of Mom's training in deal-making at the flea market. I really, really hate bartering. At one vendor's table, I picked up a Boy Scout watch I loved. "How much is this?" I asked the fellow.
Mom grabbed the watch from my hand, put it back on the table, then turned us around so we had our backs to the seller.
"Never ask 'how much?' when there's no price tag. Vendors are trained in mental telepathy. They know what you'll pay."
"Why on earth are we facing away?"
"They all have master's degrees in lip reading," she said. "When we face him, tell him you only have $5 and don't let him see your eyes."
"Why?"
"Because you have that fifty I gave you. Vendors take classes in lie detection. They know your pupils dilate when you're lying."
"Mo-ther! You can't be serious about all this."
She was. She turned us back around. I looked down at the ground, shuffled my feet and muttered, "You don't want to sell it for $5, right? I mean, that's all I have, sort of."
"To be honest," he said, "I paid $25 for that watch."
Mom whispered, "The yutz is lying."
"How do you know?"
"Because he said, 'to be honest.'"
She led us away, then said, "Did you see him look to the left?"
"Sheesh, Ma. That doesn't mean anything."
"Left means lying." You see, my mother was a trained lie detector too.
At the next table, I saw a gorgeous gold ring. The dealer heard me say, "Oh Mother! It fits perfectly. It's exactly like that special ring Dad gave me that was stolen from my high school gym locker. We'll never get another chance like this again. I love this more than words can say!" Then I asked the dealer, "How much?"
He said, "Two hundred dollars."
I'd never seen the look on my mother's face that I saw at that moment. I waited for the reprimand of a lifetime. Like a scared 10-year-old girl, I got even more worried because she didn't say anything at all.
Instead, she simply bought me the ring.
And so, when Mom and I were through furnishing my tiny apartment, I didn't want her to leave me. But she had to go back to Baltimore. She had her life there and I needed to find the courage to begin my own, here on Cape Cod.
Sometimes I can still see the two of us, just like in an old-fashioned photograph, where we're standing together in an oval-shaped splash of sunshine on the dry, dusty grounds of the flea market. Our foreheads are touching, so tenderly, as we're looking down at the ring on my finger.
Of all of the things I still have that we bought on those wonderful days together, the most valuable collectibles are my memories.
------------
Her novel "Raw Nerves" is now available as a paperback and an e-book. To take a look at it on Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0060LNUKK/mikeysfunnies-20
Copyright 2012 Saralee Perel. Permission is granted to send this to others, with attribution, but not for commercial purposes.
today'sTHOT============================
A mother can touch a whole generation just by loving her own child well.
=======================================
PASS IT ON!
Yeah, you can send this Funny to anybody you want. And, if you're REAL nice, you'll tell them where you got it! www.mikeysFunnies.com
===============================
No comments:
Post a Comment