Jana:
When I was a kid, I was really into collecting things. Here is an abridged list of items that I collected:
I realize that, as we go down this list, it gets less and less conventional, until we come to the ultimate fucking weird thing to collect. But these are the facts. The story goes that one Saturday in December, while attending my elementary school’s annual Holiday Fair (which I LOVED and looked forward to ALL YEAR and could never sleep in anticipation of), I was struck by a genius idea. See, the fair was the kind of deal where they’d clear out all the classrooms and craft vendors from what seemed like all over the world would flock to set up stands and sell magical, useful things, like novelty soaps and handmade potholders and christmas ornaments. To give you a little picture of the fair, know that there was also a raffle, and every year the BIG raffle prize was a homemade quilt, which I wanted DESPERATELY for no reason that I can understand at all (I never won, but I did spend all of my money on raffle tickets). And, the sixth grade class always performed the “Mummer’s play” twice during the course of the day, which I looked forward to for five long years before finally reaching puberty and being deemed hot enough to play the Prince himself (the first in a series of male roles that I happily took on). Anyway. I’m getting away from my point.
My point is, on the day of this particular holiday fair, as I walked by each vendor on my sixth or seventh loop, still alone and blissful from the excitement of it all, I noticed that at the edge of each table was a colorful pile of business cards. Absentmindedly, I began to pick them up as I went. At the end of the day, I was DELIGHTED with my pile. And that’s when I developed my unique business model: BUSINESS CARD COLLECTING. A new niche! As the only kid in the world collecting business cards, I hypothesized that if I got enough of them, one day I could set up an office where people would call me and ask me if there was anywhere in Lexington to buy handcrafted scarves, and I’d just scroll through my rolodex of cards and point them straight towards a scarf vendor, or whatever in the world they were looking for. THE INTERNET. Is what I didn’t know would be invented and fuck up my entire plan.
As you can see from my homemade, taped on label, I saw this gift as an opportunity to start displaying a “card of the week” to the many visitors to my bedroom. Photo Cards by Erika didn’t even know how lucky she was to be chosen.
So there you have it: my greatest achievement to date. In the holiday spirit, I leave you with this picture of me, taken at the dawn of the new millenium and the height of my collecting success. I think you can see the innovative entrepreneurial spirit in my beady eyes (if you can get past the glare of my white, white face).