Previous Challenge Entry (Level 4 – Masters)
Topic: Write in the HUMOR genre (04/12/07)
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TITLE: Marilyn's Money-Making Schemes | Previous Challenge Entry
By Sally Hanan
04/19/07 -
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Her first attempt involved a scheme that cost her the incredible price of $300 to get into. In return, she would get a box of overpriced cleaning products that she would sell. If she sold enough, and signed on enough distributors under her, she would get points towards greater things.
The conferences were amazing – the music, the fast cars, the vacations in paradise…all of the glamour made her even more determined to get her business going.
By the end of her first month she had called every person she had ever known in her life, including the boyfriend she had left on the pier 41 in August of 1969.
“Marilyn, we haven’t talked for 40 years, and THIS is why you are calling me?”
“Oh yes, Bob, but you don’t understand. This is such godly business, and we can make millions if we do it right.”
“And what does it involve?”
“Well, I don’t want to talk over the phone, but if we can get together….”
After that and other chilly receptions from further “old friends”, Marilyn realized that she had been delusional all those years, and really she had had no friends at all. Over the next three years she worked her way through the boxes of concentrated cleaning bottles until she had her next brainwave.
She began to fill out surveys at $5 a survey. Before long, every company in America had Marilyn’s e-mail address and she was inundated with offers of life insurance, boats, and something called Viagra©. Her husband began to grumble about her time online, and many was the night he went to bed alone while she typed out her income, hobbies and what she thought of the Clinton family. A few months later, the thing called Viagra© was mailed to the house. Marilyn looked it up on Wikipedia, thinking that her husband was a drug addict… She gave up the survey taking immediately, and dutifully went upstairs with Bill at 10pm every night.
Marilyn decided that she was going to become more educated and learn how to be a medical transcriptionist, but she had a lot of difficulty with many of the lengthy words, and because of a smidgen of acute memory loss, the lessons were a little difficult to follow and remember for long. She failed her final exams miserably.
Still feeling as if she had to contribute in some way, Marilyn started her own house cleaning business. Being 65 didn’t help her vigor, and when she got stuck between the toilet bowl and the wall of a neighbor on Sunrise Place with a left locked hip , Bill put his foot down.
“Marilyn, will you quit trying to get busy? I didn’t marry you to enlarge my income; I married you because I wanted to be with you for the rest of my life.”
As soon as he said it, Marilyn eyes filled with tears. Bill’s arms enfolded her carb. enriched body and he rubbed his shaven, cologne covered cheek against hers.
“But what about the lifestyle we wanted, the cars, the retirement plan?”
“I have everything I’ve ever wanted right here in my arms, and you’ve never earned my love; it’s just something I’ve always wanted to give you.”
Marilyn smiled to herself, because she knew that what she had been missing all along had been a PARTNER!
These days, Marilyn and Bill are deliriously happy touring the country in their kitted out limo. They only visit one town a month, because the travel makes them a little stiff, but once they arrive at their scheduled speaking location, they both address the issues of how to stay happily married and what a successful retirement looks like.
Marilyn and Bill also carry a few sales items with them for some extra income... the remaining bottles of cleaning product from their garage...
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