Lemonade Stands and Lies
My first job was hustling for a Nintendo. My parents were on the lower-middle-class side and they were young. Younger than seems appropriate looking back on our history as my thirty-eight-year-old self. When I was six and in desperate, indescribable need of a Nintendo, (the OG Nintendo with Duck Hunt and Mario Bros) my mother would have been twenty-six. She was in college and my dad worked full time and they didn’t have the $200 it cost for a brand new, shiny and important, NES. Preferably from Toys R Us because I had just received the catalog in the mail, and photos of cool kids playing NES taunted me from the pages.
My parents told me that I would have to buy it myself. I was seven. Maybe eight but I doubt it. I think I was in second grade but I was also an older kid and a mature child for my age. My friends were older by a couple of years which made me feel older, and I was the ring leader of the group which was too much power for my second-grade mind to hold.
I’ve always been persuasive. This is conflicting because I’m also a textbook co-dependent people pleaser so it’s a real cat and mouse. What I’ve learned through much introspection and support groups over the years is that my people-pleasing is actually just a…
