"Hey!" I yelled up to Husband on my way out of the door to take Sophia to a friend's birthday party. "I need an obscure but potentially lucrative talent. Maybe fantastic things from working a wood lathe? Can you think of anything for me?"
"I thought we were going to refurbish thrift store furniture," he yelled back.
Oh, yeah. That's right. We did talk about that a couple days ago, and I like the idea, though it's hardly obscure. We're always scouting thrift stores anyway, so we might as well have some fun turning sad and lonely dinged up furniture with good bones into lovely, salable finished products. It certainly isn't sitting in front of a computer writing or editing, and that's the really great part. Writing and editing doesn't usually involve a lot of human interaction, and sometimes I wonder if I'm turning into a hermit. It's a lucky thing that I just look like a helpful sort of person, and when I go to the library or someplace like that, people frequently ask me for help (thinking I work there) or strike up a conversation (because I just look friendly, I guess).
In fact, a couple days ago, I was at the thrift store with Husband and MIL. Husband and MIL were looking at stuff, but I grabbed a home decorating book with nice pictures and wandered over to the furniture section to sit down and read it while I waited. I chose to sit in the one piece of furniture I thought was worth buying and fixing up: a wingback chair clad in an unfortunate choice of faded blue and green plaid fabric. It was comfortable, and the arms were ample enough to provide good elbow support. With a thoughtful upholstering job, it could be a great chair.
I had been sitting there for a good twenty minutes when a man walked up.
"Have you finished the book yet?" he asked. "You were reading it when I came in, so I figure you must be just about done with it now." He laughed.
I showed him the page I was on.
"It's mostly pictures," I said, smiling. "So, yeah, I'm managing to get through it."
He told me that he was looking for a loveseat and pointed to an awful example with a sagging seat and dirty, horribly patterned material. "That looks like just what I need," he said. I pointed to one further down the row that was the same size but in really good shape. "Or that one," I countered.
That started a conversation about the insane price the store was charging for downtrodden old dressers, and we shared our displeasure over it. I mentioned that the chair I was sitting in was something I would buy, so I stood up and we looked at it a bit, commenting on its qualities. One of the store workers wandered up and joined our conversation. She flipped over the price tag on the wingback, which said $25.
"Oh, I could probably get that marked down for you," she said, noticing that the code on the tag meant the chair had been sitting there for several days. She started looking around for the manager. "It depends on who's managing. Sometimes I can get things marked down for customers."
I thanked her but told her I wasn't ready to buy today. She told me to look for her whenever I wanted to see if she could get me a markdown. I assured her I would. She wandered off, as did the man I had been talking to.
I was done with the book, and it wasn't one I wanted to take home with me, so I went to put it back on the shelf. On my way, I ran across Husband and MIL, who were heading for the cash registers. I told them I'd catch up after I put the book back on the shelf. But just as I reached the shelves, another man stopped me.
"Are you putting that book back?" he asked. I nodded. "Can I have it?" he asked. I handed it to him and began to turn and walk away, but he stopped me again.
"Is this a good book?" he asked, thumbing through the pages. "I'm really into home decorating books. Well, by that, I mean that I own four books about home decorating, but I'm always on the lookout for more."
He handed a McDonald's french fry to his daughter, who looked like she was about two years old and was standing up and hanging onto the side of his shopping cart. She grinned and shoved the fry into her mouth with her chubby little fingers. "Fe fie," she said explanatorily. I smiled at her.
"It isn't a book I'd buy," I said to her dad. "It has some lovely pictures, but it doesn't have any good tips in the text. I like pictures along with good ideas in the text. Unfortunately, they've moved all their books around and they've got nothing good in right now." I pointed to the shelf for home improvement, which had a few tattered and outdated books on it but was otherwise empty.
"What's a good book, then? What do you recommend?" He was still flipping through the pictures in the book I gave him, stopping to inspect one or two more closely. His daughter finished the fry and reached out her hand for another one, her short blond hair floating around her little head. Her dad handed her another fry.
"She's never so good in the cart. These fries are working really well. I'll have to use them more often," he laughed.
"You're very, very cute," I said to the little girl. She smiled at me around her mouthful.
Meanwhile, I couldn't think of any particular titles, despite the fact that my personal library is bursting with decorating books I have deemed worthy enough to be bought and brought home. This was the reason I made such a terrible salesperson in the book store, as well. As soon as a customer would try to describe a book or ask me for an idea, my mind would immediately go completely and utterly blank. Very inconvenient for both me and the customer. But suddenly, I remembered that I get magazines in the mail, and I also managed to remember the titles of them.
"I guess it depends on what you like in a decorating book," I said, trying to sound somewhat knowledgeable and intelligent and not completely empty-headed. "You have to look at a lot of them to decide what your favorite styles of decorating are. I like magazines, too. I get Better Homes & Gardens and Metropolitan Home, and I like those because you could actually, conceivably copy some of the ideas in them. I get Architectural Digest, as well, and I love it, but mostly I have to ask myself who could afford that kind of stuff? I picked up a cheap subscription to Country Home last year, but that magazine is just disappointing."
The man nodded as I spoke, listening intently. He laid the book I had given him on top of other books on the shelves, leaving it behind as he started gently pushing his cart forward. His daughter jumped up and down with excitement, but she was so short that she wasn't in danger of falling out of the cart. I followed him to the end of the aisle so I could go to the front of the store and meet Husband and MIL at the cash registers.
"Thanks for your help," he said. "No problem," I answered. I waved goodbye to his little girl and then headed up to the front of the store.
"I thought you were just putting a book back on the shelf," said Husband, when I slid up to him in line.
"That thing that happens to me in libraries happened here," I told him. "Someone asked me for help. You know I can't walk away from someone asking me for advice on books."
Husband chuckled.
"You know that wingback chair I showed you?" I asked him. "We gotta come back and get that. It could be our first project. I think I have about four books on reupholstering in our library."
After I master refurbishing old furniture, though, I'm going to get a wood lathe and develop an obscure talent in that direction. It just sounds fun. Maybe even lucrative.
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