Seasonal memories

My grandmother wanted me to paint yard sale signs for her. As the artistic one in the family, she thought I should be the one to make creative yard sale signs to stand out from the neighborly competition. I whined and procrastinated. I was at that age where I hated doing anything for anybody, especially something SO beneath my talent as a yard sale sign. Finally, my mom sat me down and made me do it.

They were cleverly designed signs. I planned big, block letters with jaunty slants, and I chose eye popping contrast colors to make the sign really bounce. Neon yellow and true blue. Perfect.

I was given two poster boards, which I think was actually one large poster board cut in half to save money. My aunt was thrifty like that.

First I painted the blue block letters “YARD SALE” and an arrow pointing right. Then I meticulously outlined every letter and the arrow with the neon yellow. Masterpiece. Glorious pop art yard sale sign.

The next sign I painted in neon yellow with the arrow pointing left, and blue outlining all. Pop! More artistic brilliance elevating the mundane. The opposite arrows were genius on my part, because no one instructed me on where they presumed the arrows should go. But I knew the plan was to put signs on either end of the block, so the arrows had to point in separate ways to point in to the sale. Brilliant foresight, little Christine Wy.

My aunt left to hang the signs. My mom pulled me aside, and said in her most apologetic and simultaneously accusatory voice (imagine her as precursor to Marge Simpson), “Christine, you did it wrong. The arrows point in the wrong directions your aunt said.”

Smack down on my genius. “What?”

“The arrows were supposed to point down the street, instead they point out. Your aunt just drew over them with a black marker.”

Smote my pop art signs! “But they were designed to go at either end of the street! They were designed to point in from two directions!”

“They were the wrong directions sweetie.”

Being 14 and unable to communicate rationally, I stomped off. All they had to do was switch the signs. I couldn’t believe the whole arrow concept was just gone. They patronizingly accepted my brilliant signs because they had no choice, they asked me for the sign commission, and that was what they had to work with, smiling grimly like I had messed up something simple yet again.

I worked a card table at the yard sale. I didn’t get much action. I sat and sketched in a notebook, scenes that I imagined from Pink Floyd songs. The neighbor boy had a painful crush on me. It hurt me that he followed me like a ridiculous fawning puppy, like all those stupid oldies songs I heard, “Puppy Love,” and it annoyed the crap out of me that I couldn’t shake this kid. My defense: talk so obscurely over his head with teenage angst that he’d leave me alone.

“What are you drawing?”

“A man and a woman in a fishbowl trying to get out. It means ‘fuck all that we gotta get outta this.’”

“Huh.”

“They’re trapped in their small world and they have to escape to real life, the real life beyond all this.”

“What are you doing tonight?”

“I’m going to ‘Rocky. I can’t wait to get out of here and see my real friends.”

“Oh! ‘Rocky!’ I love that movie! Dunh, du-du-du, dunh-du-du, doo doo!”

Oh god, not that “Rocky.” “Rocky Horror picture Show,” doofus. “Whatever,” I rolled my eyes. I slammed down my sketch pad and walked away. He followed. And now he had a tail of friends younger than him following too.

“I have work to do,” I growled at him, and stormed inside my grandmother’s house via the back door.

I didn’t sell anything. I had a horrible time. Nothing went the way I imagined. I imagined being the creator of brilliantly arrowed signs and charming customers as the bohemian girl with long hair and peasant skirt. I wasn’t any of those things. Instead I was bitter and angry and hid in my grandmother’s toy room reading children’s books.

After all, I was a teenager. In the words of Bart Simpson, “Making teenagers depressed is like shooting fish in a barrel.” I was one sad fish.