The Pain of 100 Knives You Cannot Sell

I have always set myself up for failure.

One summer, in college, a letter was delivered to my grandma’s house. It was addressed to me and I was ecstatic. I never got mail, because mail is an underrated delicacy; nobody wants to know your address while also liking you enough to send you anything anymore. Sometimes people wanna know my address, but they are not the same people who like me enough.

The letter told me of a job opportunity to make $15 an hour, which was a lot. The minimum wage in Ohio at the time was around $7 - this mysterious letter knew how to sell itself. And it was for me only, like being selected for Hogwarts or jury duty. My mother thought it might be sex trafficking, I thought it was destiny.

I must’ve called the number or emailed somebody, because in no time I was in a little fluorescent conference room with a few other hopefuls. Some young, some old, we all watched an awkward, husky bald guy get down to the business: we were going to be selling knives.

Everyone told me this was a scam, a pyramid scheme, an abomination. But the fact of the matter was, it interested me. I don’t know why, but it just sounded fun. I didn’t have to buy anything to start, the guy was really adamant about telling me that. I would be loaned an entire knife set to demonstrate the awesome knife powers to my potential clients - I just had to learn the ropes.

So, I spent hours in a little room being conditioned to sell knives. I was shown an array of kitchen utensils I would then have to study and remember the names and powers of, like Pokémon. Then, we got to do magic. We would ask a potential buyer for a penny which we would then cut in half with our really good shears. My handbook had a whole section dedicated to how this wasn’t actually defacing government property.

All in all, there was a lot to remember - especially because I rarely used utensils to begin with. I didn’t know how to cook; it wasn’t something that was valued in my family, unfortunately. My go-to after school meal was a Mcdonald’s quarter pounder with a mocha frappe, which my grandpa started letting me order after I turned 9. I regularly used plastic cutlery, and I’d never once thought you could ever need more than 1 knife. Still, I wanted to do this.

We were told that our first customers should be family and friends. Start small, get connections from there. That became my next problem, because I didnt really have a family.

The issue of family is two pronged. I don’t have a dad’s side. We tried to once, but it didn’t really work out. This has always made me feel inferior and stupid. So much so, that as I’m typing this, I don’t even want to talk about this sort of thing.

On my mom’s side, I have one aunt and one uncle. Typing this makes me feel stupid, too.

Thinking about who to sell to jolted me back to my 2nd grade art project. Remember Flat Stanley? If you don’t, he was, unironically, a skinny legend.

Stanley liked to travel, so once we all made our own little paper and crayon Stanleys, we were to mail him as far away as we could. Think of your longest distance family friend, your widest range relative - that’s where he should go! Whoever got their Stanley the farthest was to get a big prize. I think one went to Egypt.

Mine went to Cleveland.

This was going to be a challenge. I retreated home to my grandma and mother, both of whom listened intently as I explained my knives.

I would need a test subject. It didn’t matter if they bought the knives - I’d get paid either way. That didn’t seem right, but it was the knife company’s promise to me. My mother arranged a meeting with my Aunt Renee.

Renee is complicated. She is the youngest daughter, supposedly reincarnated from a stillborn child my grandmother once gave birth to. She’s also a zombie.

She herself gave birth to a boy, and that boy and I grew up together. Renee didn’t dote on her child the way my mother doted on me. He lived life uninhibited by a mother figure, or so I’m told.

When I was little, I’d call her “Aunt Nae.” This was funny, because Renee raised horses in her youth. The one thing, maybe the only thing, she ever cared about - was her animals. As I grew up, she got more and more into dogs. She had a Great Dane in a tiny ranch, then a tiny Chihuahua named Bucky who she sewed clothes for. She took the mutt my parents couldn’t stand, and it died with dignity. She adopted two Blue Heelers and took them to herding classes far away, up in the mountains.

She bought out a series of storage units, she knocked all the walls down. She put up fences, hoops, crates, and padding. She made a gym for dogs. The people who came to this gym for dogs were the worst lesbians you’d ever meet. I’d sit there in a church pew she’d gotten in a garage sale and I would watch the dogs obey the lesbians. The dogs were going to win awards for running and jumping and listening.

People don’t often win awards for that, which might be why Renee stopped caring for them. Or maybe she never cared at all. She was probably always weird, but our familial curse zapped something out of her.

We are all bipolar. Or OCD. The women in my family.

My grandma believes she saw God, my mother told me she could feel her brain slipping around in her head.

My cousin has been dead twice. The other scratched a bald spot into her head, a hole into her leg.

When I was 6, I told the doctor that something was wrong with my heart. We went through a myriad of tests, poking and prodding. Countless hospital visits, because I never felt more safe than when everyone thought I was going to die.

That’s our true affliction. Something in our lineage rendered each of us uniquely insane, but we’ve all survived long enough for me to tell you this story. I know that’s the only reason I’m still here, why the men all died and we did not.

I know I’m intertwined with Renee in a way only God will show me once this is all over, but until then, I sit patiently in her cramped dining room. I’ve assembled my presentation neatly in front of her and I am here to perform. To show her my knives.

“You don’t have to do that, Maddy,” she smiles vacantly toward me; she’ll sign whatever she needs to. I can be on my way, but I want to engage, because I’ve been practicing.

The worst part of this conflict is that both sides will lose. If I perform, Renee will be bored by me in her own home, which is rude. If I don’t perform, Renee will be forced to host me. She has not actually spoken to me since I was 8.

I ask if I can at least show her some of my tricks. I bumble through, and she laughs the entire time.

I realize then that Renee has never seen me for anything more than a comical pest. Something in her periphery that she can’t swat away. She must think family is a scourge upon her. I knew she didn’t love me from a young age, but I always forgot how little respect she had for who I actually am.

Selling knives was something I thought I could do. It was an ideal. I could be someone who walked into a room and knew how to make people want what I wanted for them. Like everything else before this moment, I came up short. I did not persuade or dazzle Renee. I just went home.

I did not get to be the successful daughter who put herself through college selling cutlery. Like my father, I was too goofy and unserious. Like my mother, I had to return the dream I’d been sold.

I told the bulky knife boss that I did not make a sale and I would not be able to continue. He urged me to reconsider, but there were other things that were going to happen that summer which would make selling knives difficult. I quietly returned my kit when no one was around, taking a picture to commemorate defeat.

Soon after this, a wave of texts came through. People I hadn’t spoken to in years - all of them wondering: did I get a new job? Fuck.

Part of the initiation into selling knives was relinquishing your contact list - that’s how the snake keeps eating itself. I was naive to think my overgrown manager would do anything less than text every single person I’ve ever known. What a fucking evil knife salesman. It was insult to injury.

I cringed for days and days as texts trickled in.

My childhood best friend texted me. A pretty girl who ended up becoming a semi-successful model. The first boy I had ever made out with, who gave me a hickey, who I drove an hour away for to do so, texted me. This was a miserable experience.

When it all happened, I laughed. I made long-winded jokes online, crafted good stories at parties. I realize now how little I ever gave myself beyond these laughs.

I always saw myself as this sad little cartoon. I had a knob on my back you could turn and it would wind me up. I’d zip around and say outrageous things, make funny faces. You could just look at me and laugh. It was easy being that way, because nobody ever had to reckon with the way they treated me.

If I could go back in time, I would sell a knife. I would sell the sharpest knife to the highest bidder, actually. And everyone would smile at me, but with respect. Not with the pity they always seemed to. And I think I would finally be happy, if only I could have sold that knife.