Here’s a story from my checkered youth:
It was the 60s, my mother’s birthday, and I was tasked with inviting one of my mom’s friends to the party. Or at least at that time I thought the invitee was a friend of my mom’s. Not sure what they were thinking as I was in the middle of watching The Man from U.N.C.L.E. I watched this show every week, it was a religious experience for me. Some people went to church every Sunday. I sat in front of the TV every Tuesday and entered the world of spies and action. I’m embarrassed to say that at the age of 12, I believed the U.N.C.L.E. organization existed. In my defense during the credits the show thanked the organization for it’s cooperation in the making of the show. It was the 60s and Al Gore was nowhere to be seen. How could I not know? I mean it was on TV so it had to be true. It wasn’t until my forties that I discovered that that was a joke. I’d believed that lie with the innocence a 12yrs old has when their imagination works overtime.
So when my mom asked me to run down the street and invite the Avon Lady to join us, I did what any twelve year old would do, complain that my show wasn’t over yet.
As you may have guessed that was the wrong answer—it wasn’t until years later that I got to see the end of that episode—and so there I was, not really confused but doing as asked, standing on the front porch of the Avon Lady. A woman I’d seen a few times around the neighborhood and at least once at my house selling my mom and other women something, I wasn’t sure—come on I was a twelve year old boy—what.
I could tell the Avon lady was a bit confused but she agreed and as I’d been instructed to walk her back to my house I waited while she grabbed something from inside and then we walked back.
Upon escorting this woman to my house and discharging my duties as ordered, I headed for the kitchen and cake. I was focused on cake and so missed the confusion on my mom’s face.
Enjoying my cake I wandered back to the living room filled with adults, I noticed that another family friend was congratulating my mom on her birthday. This woman lived directly across the street from my house and we, as two family’s, had spent quality time together.
Her name was LaVonne.
Imagine my surprise when later that evening, once the party guests had departed and clean-up commenced, I was confronted by my mom.
“Why did you go to the Avon lady’s house and bring her to my birthday party?”
“Huh? That’s what you told me to do.”
“No, I said go invite LaVonne. I don’t really know the Avon lady. That was very embarrassing. You’ve been watching too much TV.”
If you know anything about the 60s and television—boob tube, idiot box, and the often quoted, “you’ll rot your brain if you keep watching”—that was the go-to when any kid did something the parental units deemed an error. Blame it on TV.
And so I was given the ultimatum of being banned from watching TV.
Now as my 72-going-on-73 year old brain remembers those times, I will admit I don’t remember a curtailing of my TV habit. Sure, it probably happened, but it was simply a blip in Al’s childhood memories.
Not like the memory of inviting the Avon lady instead of LaVonne our across the street friend, that story is indelibly burned into my brain.
But that memory, LaVonne, the Avon lady, it was TV’s fault, is just one of many incidents that made up my early years. Not that my life, at that age, was any more weird than others but it was my weird life.
Oh, and why I heard ‘Avon lady’ instead of LaVonne? You got me.
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