Polar Opposites

Mini-ghost says, "WTF!?"

Sunday was a pretty good day for me at Jack Russell Farm Brewery. I made some sales and met some great people. Meeting fun and interesting people is one of the reasons I enjoy having a booth up there, and this time of year, running into fellow Hallowe'en freaks is a regular occurence.


Running into people who think you're desperate and running a garage sale, sadly, is the other side of the coin. I had an experience with a couple of people who reminded me of a topic Ghoul Friday and I had covered during our Hauntcast interview.


So, these two women come up with their kids and are looking around the booth. They spot my mini-ghosts, and one of them picks one up and says, "Oh, how cute! How much is it?" She turns it over and sees the price. "Seven dollars!?"


I try to get my eyebrows out of my hairline before she sees I'm watching her.


Her friend says, voice dripping with snotty contempt, "I wouldn't pay seven dollars for that!" I'm pretty sure she didn't think I had heard her.


Mind you, someone, if fact, bought three of them the day before, because she wanted a little ghost family. But I digress.


Well, they wandered off without buying anything, and I turned to the next customer, who bought a couple of things and went off to grab a beer. People milled around a bit in the booth, and suddenly, I saw those two marching up to the booth again, body language screaming, "Confrontation." Inwardly, I sighed.

Mini-ghost says, "Go
away, mean bitches!"

"We're here to talk business!" one of them says to me.


Really, I think. I thought you were here to ask about the meaning of life. Go figure.


I hold a hand up. I know where this is going. I've been here before.


"Before you say anything-" she starts to interrupt, but I talk over her. "Before you say anything, I need to make something clear to you. First I have to go buy my clay, then I come home and make my ghosts, carve their little faces. Then I wait for them to dry-" she starts to interrupt again. I talk over her. Again.


"Then I fire them in my kiln, and my electric meter sounds like a Huey helicopter trying to take off. When they cool, I go in and glaze them, three coats of black and three coats of clear. Then I fire them again."


"Now, what was it you were going to say?"


If she had been smart, she would have shut her yap and gone away. But, no. She just keeps going.


"Well," she says, "we all have to work for a living!" I flash on the eighteen- to twenty-hour-days I've been putting in, and still not getting everything done that needs to get done.


"I work from eight to ten hours a day!" she babbles arrogantly. (Clearly, we artists don't need time to make our work. It simply falls off our bodies, like a snake shedding its skin. Who knew?)


"I remember those days," I answer. "I wish I worked only eight to ten hours a day." She looks at me blankly. Her buddy steps in.


"She doesn't want to negotiate." Again with the snotty tone. What is with people, anyway? Fricken' entitlement mentality.


"No, she doesn't."


"Let's go," and she rakes this contemptuous stare over me before she turns away. Her wonderful friend follows after. I restrain the urge to give a little finger-wave and say, "Bye!" as they walk away, offended righteousness written all over them. After all, I don't want the Brewery to suffer bad press because of something I did, regardless of my reason.


Wal-Mart. I think. Dollar Store. This is where you need to keep shopping, lady. And your nasty little buddy, too. I sigh, thinking that my work has been in a museum and an international ceramic arts show, and these are still the people I have to deal with, and will for as long as I sell my work.


Mind you, had they been nice and respectful, and perhaps offered to buy something else that was more expensive, I would have been happy to take a dollar or two off the price, or even throw them in for free. But for one or two mini-ghosts, plus a bad attitude, it was not worth my while.

People come and go from the booth, some buying, some not. Then the flip side of the coin walks in with her son, delight written all over her face.


She wanders the booth, looking at everything, sometimes touching with a gentle finger. Simple happiness at the whole Hallowe'en vibe just poured off her.


My kind of person, I think.


We make idle chit-chat, then she decides to buy the pumpkin pictured, after I show her the little bat I have carved in the back of him to cast a bat shape onto a wall when he's lit.


Then comes the clincher, and it makes my whole day. She tells me that she reads my blog all the time, that she's a big fan, and that she drove a long way to see me and buy one of my jacks.


It totally makes up for those rude women. I am telling her, right now, thank you so much for taking the time and effort to come see me. My day would not have been nearly as great if you hadn't come!


It's one of those crazy life lesson things, about taking the good with the bad, about not judging your work by the monetary value idiots place on it. It's about knowing that somewhere, there is someone who loves what you do, and is so happy to take it into his or her home and treasure it every day.


It's about unlooked-for Great Pumpkin gifts, physical and metaphysical. 


Thanks, Great Pumpkin! It was exactly what I needed.