A Knack at the Door

I got it from my dad, this strange and incongruent entrepreneurial drive, this thirst to sell. It makes no sense for a quiet introvert like me, whose hands shake in front of groups and who cancels more social engagements than is appropriate in polite society, but it’s true nonetheless: I have a knack for sales. I debuted in fifth grade with a poetry machine made of an appliance box. The machine (with me cramped inside it with a flashlight and a pencil) spit out five-, ten-, and fifteen-line poems for a penny a line. I coasted rapidly downhill from that lofty debut, and have since sold everything from French fries to advertising to magazine subscriptions to vitamins and laundry soap to affordable health care and clean water. Most recently, I’ve sold multimillion-dollar improvement plans to state and federal review panels in order to score grants for public schools. I’ve sold over the counter, in the office, on the phone, and with a knock at the front door.

Speaking of knocks at the front door, we get a lot of them in the academic hotbed of liberal generosity that is Prospect Park. So yesterday when I was upstairs in my attic sanctuary, lying in bed in the middle of the afternoon because I’d been sucker-punched by my annual back-to-school cold, my stepdaughter Lily pounded up the stairs to tell me there was someone at the door who insisted he had to speak to someone eighteen years or older. “Tell him to go away,” I rasped. She said, “That’s the problem. He won’t. I think you’d better come down.”

Uh-oh. This guy got persistent with the wrong sick lady. I climbed slowly down two flights of stairs, walked to the front door, and glared at the widely smiling man who awaited me there. “I do not appreciate being dragged out of bed,” I whispered dramatically, since my voice had gone out the day before. The salesman blew past my complaint and started his spiel, saying that he hadn’t meant to get me out of bed, but that he just needed to talk to someone eighteen years old. “My stepdaughter told you I was sick in bed,” I croaked, “and you should have respected that.” A cloud passed over his eyes. I saw it just as if it had happened to the sun in the sky. Then he apologized and left.

And I immediately felt guilty. Poor guy. He probably thought Lily was just making excuses, like people always do when you go door to door. Would my scolding throw him off for the evening, make him miss his quota? Did he have a family to support? I should have heard him out.

Maybe only a former door-to-door canvasser can fully appreciate the rugged, desolate terrain of one front step after another; I, for one, will never forget it. The strap of the leather satchel across my shoulder, the weight of the clipboard in my hand, summer sun waning as the evening careened toward nine, kids voices ringing out from backyards, and the trembling tension of suspense between the push of the doorbell and the opening of the door. And finally, the rush of success with every check collected. I never once missed quota.

That’s a salesman’s daughter for you. My dad has been around a few blocks himself, dabbling in everything from mopeds (yeah, you probably remember his old shop on Central Avenue in Northeast Minneapolis, don’t you?) to soap (until the EPA got interested, but I never really understood that story) to real estate (which somehow fell through because of a licensing hitch) to used cars (but the neighborhood was bad and wore him down) to boats, which aren’t exactly flying off the lot in this economy. Just recently, though, he told me he’s gotten into buying timeshares, which just might be the ticket.

For all the years I’ve known him, my dad has never worked a traditional nine-to-five job for somebody else, and I can see how that rebellious streak rubbed off on me. The act of showing up for work at the same place at the same time five days out of the week for my teaching job still takes me by surprise. Me? Keep a schedule? How amusing.

In a weird way, my dad made a schemer out of me, by example or genetics or some stirring of the two. Why not fly risk up the flagpole and see if it salutes? I like the thrill of the chase, even though I don’t like skinning my knees. Yet the scabs give me empathy for all the rest of us out there. Go ahead. Give me your spiel and I’ll do what I can. Just don’t drag me out of bed next time.