We’re eating ourselves

by Geno Petro

Chicago Broker Owner Realtor | RE 2.0 Blogger

Author website

I was installing a new Genie garage door opener one Friday evening on my very first house back in 1980-whatever. Basking in ‘pride of ownership’ and eager to….

Pause.

Deep breath.

Now, let’s be honest Mr Petro… (inner voice)

Okay. Let me begin again:

I was spending an entire weekend trying to replace an old Genie motor with a new one I had purchased, on a dump I never should have bought in the first place, with just a screwdriver, a hammer and some vice-grips; the Holy Trinity for those of us born without the dominant handyman gene. This was back in a time before Fixer-Upper actually meant Tear-Down but I was a young insurance salesman born with the recessive sucker gene so what did I know? Rookie sales guys are the biggest suckers. Everybody knows this. My Realtor certainly did.

And to this day I’m still not sure if she was actually my Realtor. She shanghaied me from her Open House I’d happened upon one Sunday, hustled me into the back of her 2-door Caddy (the passenger side front seat was stacked with MLS binders the size of phone books, briefcases, and boxes of direct mail envelopes. Piles of loose, legal length paperwork and blue carbon sheets rose from the floorboard to the glove box) and shot me over to another, much cheaper Cape Cod on the northeast side of Baltimore, blowing cigarette smoke in my face the rest of the afternoon and staring me down in silence until I signed the paperwork in her office and wrote an initial earnest money check to her brokerage firm. I was nowhere near my car or I would have run like Updike’s Rabbit but like I said earlier, I was shanghaied.

Truth is, had I hung on to the place (I shuffled it off to another sucker 24 months to the day later; old tax code) it would have been paid off a few years ago and worth about $350,000 today for the land value alone. I paid $65,000 and almost cried every month the $495 mortgage payment was due. Now, I do cry every month with a payment exactly ten times that amount. No one else to blame this time. I sold this one to myself. Sucker.

So it’s a Saturday morning in 1980-something and I’m resuming the project I started the prior evening (and finally abandoned a little after midnight). The original idea was to leave the insurance office early on Friday, stop at the hardware store to pick up a new Genie, run home, tear down the old one, stick up the new one, shower, and make it to the Orioles game at old Memorial Stadium in time for the 7:05pm first pitch against the Yankees. Eddie Murray was close to breaking one record that season, Cal Ripken, Jr was well on his way to another, and “Tippy” Martinez, bullpen southpaw scrub by those days (and neighbor down the street) had left two upper-deck nosebleeds in the mailbox which had been resting, unattached, on the front porch floorboards all summer; a different project for a different weekend. I listened to the game on the radio. Somebody won.

So I’m on the top rung of the step ladder looking up, sweat stinging my eyes, holding the wrong tool in the wrong hand when this little kid in a blue and gold football jersey walks up the driveway and asks me, “Wanna buy some candy, Mister? It’s $2.” I look down at him; at myself not that long ago at the time. Number 23. My number. Such a fleet journey from boy to Mister. From candy to insurance. From dependent to dependent upon. A cruel warp in Someone else’s cosmic nano formula…

“Sure.” I buy 5 boxes only because all I have is a ten and of course, the kid can’t break the bill. It was some kind of brittle. I go back to my project. The door was stuck open now and I had no choice but to finish. Unattached mailbox on the porch, garage door stuck open, grass overgrown, $495 a month mortgage, $210 a month car payment, $85 electricity, $65 Visa, $35 Britannica, $25 Electrolux, food, clothing, alcohol… I did a quick calculation. I just gave the kid 10% of my after tax monthly cash flow. Brittle, indeed. Recessive, for sure.

The next day I’m back on the ladder still looking up. It’s mid-afternoon and the radio is blaring. Yankees are winning. We all need to rally and come from behind if we hope to be victors this day. I can get the door to go down but not all the way. It’s stuck half open. I hear a small voice. I step down for fresh air and duck out to the driveway, soaked to my tee shirt with sweat. A little kid in an oversize football jersey is standing there. The large white number 88 makes him look even smaller beneath the shiny blue and gold material. “Wanna buy some candy, Mister?”

“Sorry son. I already bought some yesterday.” I look down at the end of the driveway and see Number 23 standing at the curb. “From him !” I point in the direction of the sidewalk. “I bought it from him!”

“Yeah. I know,” says the little bench warmer, clearly too small to play any position associated with that number; Defensive end? Hardly. Wide receiver? Doubtful. Probably the son of a coach or someone’s little brother. “He says you’re the only one buying anything around here.”

We reek of it, us salespeople. We can’t help ourselves. It’s recessive. I give the kid $2 in coins from my dusty golf bag leaning against a far corner of the gaping garage, mostly to punish myself for being such a sap. High handicap. Recessive. Salesman…

I checked my e-mails this morning after a real estate ‘Day of Silence’ on Sunday. I promised my wife I would not take the iPhone to the outlet malls in Wisconsin; our little end-of-summer day trip away from Chicago. An old Willie Loman type tried to sell me a pair of orange corduroys at Brooks Brothers. “60% off the lowest marked price. Takes a strong looking man like yourself to pull a pair of slacks like this off…” Pull a pair of slacks off. He looked at me, I looked back at myself 20 years from now.

“Get it? Pull a pair off…?” Loman asks. Squinting. Nudging. Low Man.

“Yes. I get it. Pretty funny. But no thank you. Orange isn’t my color. Makes me look fat.” Lessons learned. Still, there was an undercurrent; a mild urge to cave in and give the old fart $49 to help make his semi-retired floor time quota…

So I scroll through the 76 messages I received since Saturday. A third are from vendors who have no idea who I am; stabbing at URLs in cyberspace hoping to snare some hot cosmic particles but landing in my Inbox instead. ‘Dear Gene. Hi Gene. Geno! Dear Mr. Petro. Dear Mr Petroche’ (part of my blogspot adddress). Leads. SEO assistance. E-Pro workshops; Blogging Tips. Be A Better Blogger. In 30 Days. Guaranteed.

A third are from my own back-end administrator letting me know which current registrants have logged on and anyone else who is new to the website. Auto-replies are sent to Joe Blow at 555-555-5555 and Brett Favre also at 555-555-5555. Madonna, however, leaves a phone number that at least looks valid, although lacking a United Kingdom country code. Apparently, she lives in Indiana now (219). My phone pings every 15 minutes with these updates.

And finally, a third are from other Chicago Realtors. Many I know. Most I don’t. They are standing at the end of my driveway trying to snare my attention, pique my interest, hawk their own wares. One after another; Condos Along The Lake, Mc Mansions Near The Park; Short Sales On The Horizon. Won’t Last Long. (Not if one considers a year long.) Like I can’t find these overpriced Listings on my own. (Would they not be sold already if they weren’t? Overpriced? Answer Me…)

Like there aren’t already a dozen or so in the same building along the same stretch of lake with sellers who are just as eager to move on with their lives. As if a Starbuck’s card and catered Pizza Hut is ample motivation to drag me out of my $4950 per month house on Tuesdays, where I’ve been weathering my own fiscal storm since last winter as I electronically nudge along the likes Blow, Favre and the Material Girl. You see, I too, have a cyber-campaign in play; always a half dozen or so ready and willing Buyers just waiting for those last season orange corduroys to be slashed one more time, the necktie market to slacken just a little more around the throat, the short SALE to get even shorter. Or to Unsubscribe. Take a number…

Alterations Take

Two to Three

Price Reductions.

Should Be Ready

For Pick-Up

By Early Spring.

‘Pull a pair off…’

Get it?