Last night, a young woman named AMBER came to our door. She had a lanyard nametag with a photo and introduced herself as AMBER. She said it just like that: I’m AMBER. Like she thought I might be deaf. Or had recently arrived from a foreign country.

She said something about the kids’ schools and how she was introducing parents in the area to a handbook the kids would be using. She mentioned my neighbor, to whom she’d been talking. I was temporarily confused and thought the schools had sent her around to survey us, to inform us . . . or something. So when she asked if there was someplace we could sit down and talk, I let her in.

Foolish me.

So at our kitchen table, she told me again that her name is AMBER. She finally asked my name. I gave her a different one, because I’m ornery like that. I knew already I wasn’t buying what she was selling; picking up what she was laying down.

She started asking about the kids’ progress in school, making notes in a notebook. She told me about her college and that this door-to-door gig is her summer job. She asked if we ever have trouble helping the kids with homework. I said, between the two of us, indicating my husband in the other room, we’ve pretty much got it covered.

Then she offered to show me THE BOOK. I was curious, at this point to see what my neighbor had allegedly purchased. She pulled out of her backpack a giant encyclopedia reference book-type thing. It was a monster. She said, “This book is a guide to everything your children will learn from elementary school till college.”

Hahahahaha . . . ha.

I said, “We would never, ever use that. In fact, that seems like a real throwback to me.” I stopped, just short of saying, “Ever hear of the INTERNET?”

So I was polite as I kicked her out, because she really made a huge mistake in choosing her summer job. She could have waited tables. She could have worn a nametag in any retail establishment and been treated better, made more money. And she still could have told hundreds of people that her name is AMBER.

Charlottesville parents: beware of this pseudo-scam; the books are not endorsed by the schools, the salespeople are not affiliated with the schools, and they will lead you to believe they are. In addition, they’re tracking which homes in the area have children living in them, something I find quite creepy.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 15th, 2007 at 7:50 am and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.