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If I could do it all over again, I would wait just two more minutes at that door. And then leave, just like they told us in training. But it was my first house call and I was nervous. So I did the next best thing: I walked around to the side of the house to peek in the window and see if I could tell whether anyone was home.

What I saw in that window can never be unseen.

There was a very white man with a very saggy butt on his hands and knees. The black apron hanging off his body hid absolutely nothing. Standing close to the window, facing away from me, facing him, was a very slim young black woman in stiletto heels and a black corset. Her hair hung to the middle of her back and she had a riding crop in her right hand.

I was so startled I dropped the box of Pyrex® Sexy Sixties products I was carrying onto the garden stones, and the high pitched tinkling on impact told me I'd just lost at least half of the $400 investment I'd made in the brightly painted, heat-resistant bakeware. That was my seed money, the money I needed to turn a profit on, so I could buy more and better bakeware, and make more money, and eventually progress to holding Pyrex® Sexy Sixties parties in my home, and soon be raking in the $1000 a month the other independent representatives said they were making in their spare time.

Nobody at the training had said anything about this.

At the sound of the shattering glassware, the tall woman turned around. She looked at me through the window. She had purple mascara. She had red red lipstick and long red fingernails. The corset did not... contain her. It seemed to have been cut specifically to expose her feminine gifts. Below her and to the side, the very white man also looked up over his hairy shoulder. There was something round and red in his mouth.

The woman crooked a finger at me.

I turned to run and tripped over the box, then stepped in it, the violent shattering of an avocado-and-cream Amish Butterprint four-piece nested mixing bowl set ringing in my ears. I was into the car and halfway down Center St. before I even became conscious of what I was doing. At that point I was faced with a choice: go back and see if anything salvageable remained in the box, or go home.

I went home. To this day I refuse to imagine what they might have done with the box of glass shards I left them.

Googled DP's inspired starting sentence of "If I could do it over again, I would wait just two more minutes at that door" and went off this picture.