July 20, 2006

Bubbly Bookseller Cruises The Tiny Kingdom

I was getting out of the shower when I heard Porter calling me.

“Mom, there’s a babysitter at the door and she needs to speak to you!” he yelled.

I was perplexed, as I was preparing to go to the orthodontist with all three boys. I jumped into some clothes, toweled off my hair and went into the kitchen to see what was going on.

A strange girl was sitting on the porch, helping Porter make a rocket out of his collection of corks, milk jugs and duct tape. I’ve taught the boys not to open the door to strangers, but I couldn’t fault Porter too much, because this girl looked exactly like a babysitter. She just didn’t look anything like our babysitter.

She had thick brown hair, lanky legs and cheerleader-blue eyes and the curliest eyelashes I’d ever seen. In addition to her halter and shorts, she wore an official-looking badge around her neck, although my eyes weren’t anywhere sharp enough to read what it said.

She stuck out her hand. “Hi, my name is Megan, and I’m from Arizona. Porter here tells me that you have three boys in elementary school.”

I looked at Porter and frowned. For a kid who ordinarily stares at strangers silently with his buck teeth hanging over his lower lip, Beaver Boy sure had opened up to Megan. He only shares his cork collection with special friends.

“I know that people who live in the Tiny Kingdom are very
invested in their children’s education,” Megan said. “I assume that
applies to you as well.”

“Of course,” I said.

“Today is the only day I will be in your neighborhood. I’m selling student-tested and teacher-approved books that will enable Porter and his brothers to complete all of their homework assignments and truly understand the material they are learning, not just memorize it. Do you have a minute to hear about these unique reference materials?”

Normally I am extremely suspicious of people who sell door-to-door unless they are wearing a Girl Scout uniform. However, as I bent to pick up a cork that was rolling off the porch, I saw a sheaf of papers that Megan had set down. The top page said “ORDERS” and underneath, in loopy teenage handwriting, I saw the names of many of my neighbors.

“I have 3 minutes max,” I said.

Megan pulled out an organized binder.

“First, I bet you’re wondering why you need these books when you have the Internet.” She got an ominous look in her blue eyes. “The Internet is not always reliable,” she confided. “It would be terrible if your child wrote a report based on false information he got off the computer. Sadly, that happens all the time in today’s world.” She shook her head sorrowfully, and patted Porter’s shoulder. Then she looked back at me, and her eyes widened with alarm.

“What’s worse, your child could be researching something innocent, like breast cancer, and stumble upon a horrific site that contains” she looked around and lowered her voice to a whisper, “pornographic images.” Her wide eyes combined with her long, curly lashes almost obscured her eyebrows in a sinister way.

“I suppose that could happen,” I said doubtfully, although I was thinking that our days of writing reports about breast cancer are pretty far off.

“Do you know why there is snow on mountains in the summer even though hot air rises?” Porter interjected.

Megan looked at him, startled.

“Why no, I don’t,” she said.

“Does that book tell you?” Porter pressed.

“I don’t know,” Megan answered. “That’s really a very good question.”

“Porter, I’ve told you that you can ask your teacher that when school starts,” I said firmly. I turned to Megan. “Please continue.”

“I’m sure you’ve had the experience that every parent has, where your child has a homework assignment and has been taught a different way to do it than you were. We see that a lot today with math,” she said, turning to the math section of the book.

“For example, here’s multiplication the way you learned it, and here it is shown the way a lot of schools are teaching it these days. So if your child gets stuck on a problem and doesn’t recognize the way you’re telling them to do it, you can consult the book and see what you’re doing wrong,” Megan explained.

I bristled. “I’d say “wrong” is a bit harsh. Maybe I’m just doing it the old-fashioned way, the way we did it before we had ATMs and cell phones and remotes and text messaging,” I corrected.

“Well, yes, sorry,” Megan said meekly. She resumed cheerleader mode immediately.

“Anyway, when you have these books, there’s no need to confuse your child by trying to explain something differently than the way they learned it in school. You can simply look it up in one of these volumes and teach them the way they learned it in class.”

She looked down. Porter was pulling on her hand. “Do you know why my mom says she love me infinity plus one when infinity is the biggest number?” he demanded. “Why?”

“I don’t know,” Megan said uncertainly. “She just means she loves you a whole lot.” She looked at me helplessly.

“That’s exactly right, Porter,” I said. “You can’t put a number on love.”

“Do those books have numbers for love?” Porter asked.

“Well, no, they don’t,” Megan said.

“I don’t think those are very good books,” Porter said firmly, and he pulled off another strip of duct tape and wrapped it carefully around his rocket.

“I’m not sure this is for me,” I told Megan. “When my boys have trouble with homework and Bill and I can’t help them, we tell them to ask their teachers about it. That’s what the teachers are there for, and then I don’t have to worry about screwing something up and confusing the boys further. I have many talents, but teaching is not one of them.”

Megan had an answer for this.

“These textbooks have other benefits. As parents, don’t you like to keep up to date on the subjects your kids are learning about? Often students leave their texts at school, but with these valuable reference books, you can read about whatever topic your child is studying in science, for example.”

I tried to picture myself getting the boys ready for school, driving carpool, jazzercising, writing, cleaning the house, and then settling down to read about the different levels of the ocean floor so I could discuss them with Drew, cirrus and cumulonimbus clouds so Porter and I could go outside and point them out to each other, and memorizing the periodic table along with Finn. I squinted, trying to remember some elements. I had pulled neon and zinc out of my ass when I realized that Megan was continuing her spiel.

“All the teachers in the Tiny Kingdom are very excited about this learning program. They think it will be a fantastic supplement to your already top-notch scholastic courses,” Megan exclaimed.

It was time for us to have the boys’ crooked teeth checked, so I wrapped it up.

“Your talk is good, Megan, and your eyelash curler is even better. I don’t think I’m interested. But just tell me, what would I have paid for all this?” I asked.

“Only $350 for all these volumes, including a timeline of important dates in world history and a supplemental CD,” she said. “When your parents bought you an encyclopedia growing up, they probably spent well over twice that.”

“I’m sure they did,” I said. “Would you like a Coke for the road?”

“I’d love one,” she said, so I went to the refrigerator and pulled out an ice cold Sprite and gave it to her.

“Just so I can improve my selling techniques, would you mind telling me what you’d like to see included in our volumes that would make you more likely to purchase them?” Megan asked. She took a dainty sip of Sprite.

“Sure,” I said. “First, you could erase pretty much all the information that’s in the books now. I rely on the school to teach things like the War of 1812, Venn diagrams, and chlorophyll. I can’t possibly tell my children about any of those things half as well as their teachers can.”

Megan nodded.

“And,” I continued, “I’ve already been to school. I don’t have any interest in keeping up with what my children are learning except on the most superficial level. If Finn is learning about Henry VIII, I don’t feel the need to re-memorize all those wives and who died and who was beheaded and so forth. So I don’t see myself reading these in my ’spare time’ to see what my children are learning about. It’s hard enough for me to keep up with my New Yorkers and Us Weeklys. Plus, that would take away the fun. At some point, aren’t parents supposed to get to say, ‘They didn’t teach us about computer graphics when we were little, so you’re on your own with this one, buddy?’”

“It sounds like you’re just not really interested in your boys’ education,” Megan said.

I resented that, especially after I had given her a Coke.

“No, you’re wrong,” I said. “But the things that are my responsibility to teach are not in those books. Unless you have a chapter on how to make up a bed. Or the importance of hanging up your towel after getting out of the tub or shower.”

“My books don’t discuss any of that,” Megan replied.

“Well, those are only a few of the items I’d want the books to cover if I was going to purchase them. They’d also need to show how to separate laundry, how to run a washing machine, dryer, dishwasher and coffee maker, the importance of opening doors for ladies, putting your napkin in your lap at the table–”

Megan was gathering up her things and starting to back away, but I figured she’d asked, so I was going to answer.

“– how to put together an outfit that matches, how to conduct yourself whether you win or lose the baseball game, the proper way to write a thank you note, sharing, basic first aid, taking turns, cleaning up what you mess up–”

Megan ran to her car and drove away.

Wow. As far as I know, I’m the only member of the Tiny Kingdom who has run off the Bubbly Bookseller.

On the other hand, I saved $350, and that’s worth a lot.