Avon Commando's

Many moons ago, when I was young and ambitious, I sold Mary Kay cosmetics. When I signed on to this cult company, it was drilled into my head that to sell the product, you must LOOK the product.

Being a good little cult-member saleswoman, I spent about $100 of make up for myself and would spend an hour exfoliating, cleansing, moisturizing, toning and making-up my face. I would then spend another hour dressing and doing my hair, always remembering to affix my “Ask Me about Mary Kay!” button somewhere prominent on my person.

I sold a grand total of $300 worth of product, mostly to my mom, before I lost interest. I mean really, getting up at the ass crack of dawn to get ready to go to work with truck drivers and long shoremen was just ridiculous. They were perfectly happy with me as long as I showed and had breasts for them to stare at; the rest was just gravy.

But even all these years later, my indoctrination holds fast and I can’t even go to Walgreens at three am to buy Theraflu with out mascara.

At bowling on Saturday, we bowled against a team that has a badly dressed, toothless, slouchy, unmade up, furry eye browed, bad half-grown out home perm n’ dye job lady on it. Many times we’ve remarked on the way this woman chooses to leave the house, the general feeling being summarizable in a single word; yuck.

Imagine my surprise when the crone had the nerve to ask me if I had ever thought about wearing make up! Um, yes, woman, I have thought about it. I thought about it the entire time I was applying PURPLE eye shadow and trying to keep the lipstick off my teeth. Or did you think I was born with lavender eye lids and glossy lips?

Politely (because I always am) I told her yes, in fact I was wearing some right now. So THEN! The old hag says “Oh, well, you should try Avon. I think you’d be happier with the results!”

OH NO SHE DI’NT.

Then she proceeds to instruct me on proper make up application and the importance of personal presentation! As thought stretch pants with bagged out knees and a Winnie The Pooh tee shirt were the essence of Parisian fashion. As though three inches of gray roots and no front teeth were necessities for getting on the cover of Vogue. As though pores so large they could be mistaken for extra nostrils were what young girls dreams were made of.

OMG. I swear to you I spent the rest of the night looking for the camera crew of Punk’d to jump out.

If I were less secure though, I might still be hiding in the bathroom waiting for FingerHut to deliver my velour sweat suit and pink tee shirt with kittens. Because those Avon Commando’s are persuasive.