Folding brochures

Tonight (and last night and the night before that) I am folding brochures. Line it up, crease. Line it up, crease. After the children’s last art class, the teacher (who also owns the center) handed out brochures with the autumn schedule and commented about how long it had taken her and her friends to fold them and how there were still so many left to do. I said something about there being an army of parents who’d all be willing to help fold a few and she said with a mad glint in her eye, ha ha, don’t say that unless you mean it. I said sure, why not, I’d fold a few for a discount on the next class and badabing badaboom, I’m folding brochures. Hundreds of them. Maybe thousands. (Maybe millions, says Daniel. Maybe a googol. Well, maybe not that many.)

I’m actually quite pleased about it, though. It’s wonderful to engage in a bit of healthy barter after wading through the stinking mire of capitalism and its discontents. I fold brochures. She teaches my children (or me or Ed) some art. It’s very satisfying.

Wouldn’t it be nice if everything worked like this? At Whole Foods: I’ll sweep floors for sushi. At Baby Gap: I’ll fold all your sweatshopped tshirts into lovely little piles for new jeans for Daniel. At the wine store: I’ll tapdance for Pinot Grigio. At preschool: I’ll answer the phones for early childhood education. At the knitting store: I’ll recite Chaucer for attractive japanese wool.

And therein lies a crucial flaw in my plan. I am not, unfortunately, replete with tradeable skills. I cannot shoe horses, pave roads or weave cloth. Being able to hold forth on queer theory or knit charming little baby sweaters over several days are possibly life skills, but not truly barterable. Knowing how to cry “Victory!” in Klingon or knowing all the words to every song on They Might Be Giants’ second album may make me occasionally fun to have for dinner, but won’t cut it at Trader Joes.

Still, I’d be willing to pick up a few more useful skills if it meant being able to leave the checkbook at home. Money has always seemed an improbable fiction, a delusion we all agree to suffer from so that we can all keep on going to the mall.

Although it’s possible that I think this way because we don’t have so much of the stuff. If I had so much illusory cash that I could trade it for a large yacht with a staff (including one whose sole responsibility was to mix g&t as needed), I might.

Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone. — John Maynard Keynes

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