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Listen to Sandra’s story as you read it (below).
“How much are the pumpkins?” she asked in a velvety voice. Her long skirt whipped gently in the brisk fall breeze. Her innocent face and quick smile overcame the cold eyes Sandra still remembers almost 60 years later.
“Twenty-five cents for the big ones and fifteen cents for the small ones,” Sandra recited breathlessly. She had gotten her feet to track quickly enough to open the front door before the customer decided no one was home.
“Can I go and look at them?” the woman asked cheerfully.
“Sure,” Sandra replied, glad she could stay at the glass storm door and watch her pick out the pumpkins without stumbling behind her in the uneasy gait often marking her cerebral palsy. Sandra was nearly 10 years old. She didn’t want Eddie, her 12-year-old brother, to lose a sale just because he wasn’t there.
The lady returned to the house. “I’ll take those two,” she said, pointing to one large and one small pumpkin.
“That’ll be forty cents,” Sandra said abruptly, trying to quickly show she knew what she was doing. But she garbled the “f” sound, stuttering so badly that what came out sounded unintelligible even to her.
“Pardon?” the woman asked briskly. Her cold, gray eyes suddenly complemented the frown on her forehead.
Don’t blow this, Sandra told herself. “That’ll be f-o-r-t-y cents,” she repeated slowly in another choppy, breathless sentence that came out more clearly.
“Yes,” she agreed. Sandra’s confidence bounced back. The lady opened her purse.
“Do you have change?” she asked in a pleasant but strangely staccato manner.
“Yes,” Sandra answered, imagining how long it would take to climb up to the kitchen and return. The lady handed her a crisp, new bill.
“I’ll be right back,” Sandra assured her.
With the bill between her left thumb and forefinger, Sandra climbed the five steps to the kitchen on her hands and knees. She pulled herself up, saw the lady watching through the storm door, and threw the bill on the table. She opened Eddie’s cash box, scattering the neat bundle of bills to see what he had: lots of ones, some fives, some tens.
Sandra counted out four ones, two quarters, and a dime, stuffing them tightly into her right fist. She used her left hand to gingerly paw the railing as she descended the stairs, one step at a time. It was her first sale. Eddie would be so proud.
Sandra opened the storm door and, instead of counting out the bills one by one, handed the lady her change in one sweaty wad.
“That’s four dollars and sixty cents,” Sandra managed to get out.
The lady fingered through the bills and looked puzzled. “I gave you a ten-dollar bill,” she said with authority. “I need another five.”
“Oh ... I thought you gave me a five,” Sandra said with an unsure, apologetic quiver. “Let me check.”
She bounced back up the steps. How could she mistake a ten for a five? As she pulled herself up, she saw Eddie’s cash scattered across the table. She gathered the four fives. They were all crisp, and she couldn’t recall how many were there initially.
Panic set in. “You’re taking too long. She’ll wonder if you’re ever coming back,” she warned herself.
Sandra grabbed a five, scooted down the steps, and threw herself off balance upon reaching the landing. In what seemed like a fall in slow motion, she desperately reached for the storm door and caught it with her right-hand knuckles just in time.
“Here’s your five,” Sandra heard herself say, more aware of the temporary ache in her knuckles than the lady at the door.
“Thank you, young lady,” she replied with a faint smile. She slung her purse over her shoulder and took the pumpkins to her car.
Sandra took a deep breath as the lady drove out — relieved, excited, and proud about making her first pumpkin sale. Though next time, Sandra promised herself, she would pay closer attention to the business of making change.
She put the money neatly back into the box with a note: “October 14, 1955: $61.75.”
When Eddie returned, Sandra eagerly told him she had sold two pumpkins. But when he recounted the money, he found himself short by five dollars.
As a mature adult, Sandra now values the pumpkin incident as part of her journey toward eventually becoming vice president of risk management for Goldman Sachs.
At 78, she can vouch for Thomas Henry Huxley’s insight: “There is the greatest practical benefit in making a few failures early in life.”
Here’s to mature-adult living!
Jim Hasse, ABC, GCDF retired, author of “52 Shades of Graying”
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I grew up in a social environment which taught me that we, as people, were not to be trusted to do good. We were basically selfish, looked out largely for ourselves instead of others and, therefore, could not be trusted and needed to be controlled from the top down.
In other words, it was risky to rely on the generosity and goodwill of others. It was safer to avoid people, especially crowds of people.
I still may be naive, but I’m now willing to bet that, given a fair shake, most people can manage their own affairs effectively and are willing to help others when they see a need. At 81, with life-long cerebral palsy and a person often needing help, I can give you multiple examples, some of which occur almost daily, in which people are willing to stop to help me when I need it.
Two years ago, Pam and I decided to shop at Trader Joe’s in downtown Minneapolis for the first time. I had my druthers due to recent carjackings. After all, we are always prime targets because we drive a nice car and move so slowly in getting in and out of the car and stashing the groceries in the back seat.
So, instead of risking the people-desert of a nearby parking garage, my plan was to leave Pam right at the front door of Trader Joe’s (only 11 minutes from home) and then pick her up again at the same busy spot when she had finished shopping.
To my surprise, the pickup spot was again vacant when I returned. Pam was sitting inside by the window and, as I was calling her on my phone, a man with flowers in his hand and also waiting for his ride outside of the store, recognized I was trying to get her attention, tapped on the window and helped Pam navigate her grocery cart through the store’s entry way to our car.
A woman who was passing by on the sidewalk then offered to help Pam put our five bags of groceries in the back seat of our car with the parting words, “Stay safe.”
* Now that you’re a mature adult, how is your approach to risky situations different than it was when you were a youngster?