Wisdom in Unexpected Places

I am in bad need of a personality revamping, or at least a portion of my personality. I believe I may be what the less reputable people in the sales profession call a "live one". I'm not a stupid person. Not usually, anyway. But, despite being of reasonable intelligence, I am frequently taken by surprise and ambushed by sales tactics. It may be a cultural problem, for I am a foreigner living in this sometimes strange land. Thus, I am not fully equipped with the necessary armor to avoid being sucked into what most French would likely see as a scam from miles away.

You see, French sales people have the uncanny ability to make you believe the product they have in stock is the perfect substitute for the actual product you wanted but that they do not carry or do not currently have in stock. Of course, it isn't, and deep down you know this, but they, the all-knowing sales person, with much more expertise in this realm, convince you otherwise. Two years ago, I was tricked into purchasing nigella, a mysterious spice I still don't know what to do with, because I did not enter the store armed with the appropriate translation for the real product I wanted. The sales person used his vast knowledge of English spice terms (he probably at least knows "salt" and "pepper") to tell me that "Oh, yes, this one is most certainly the one." Of course, it wasn't, and as pregnant as I was at the time, I apparently could have done some harm to my fetus by ingesting it (looked that one up on the net before attempting a recipe). Then, there is the sweater I wear almost daily done in a green fuzzy yarn that tends to pill, that irks me almost every time I wear it, because I sensed the colors the sales lady chose did not match correctly. But, as always, she was able to convince me that there was much more green in that purpley mulicolored yarn than I saw. So, I wear it with only a half-pride, knowing that it was my first adult-size sweater, but never really satisfied with the outcome. Why all the philosophical reminiscing, you ask? Well, the all-knowing, yet sadly understocked sales woman has struck again.

This time it was the replacement of a set of 5 double-pointed needles with a circular one. Once again, my American-raised mind was unequipped to deal with the "expertise" of the French sales woman. As always is the case, I sensed during the transaction that this item would not really work out, but I was helpless to stop myself from doing as the sales lady willed me to, and I purchased it. Is it gullibility or optimism that drives this kind of error? I'm not sure. I only know the resulting dissatisfaction and its sting. This time, I reluctantly purchased a circular needle that measures 60 cm in length, being told it would be fine for making a set of mittens. MITTENS! For those of you not familiar with circular needles, there is a certain basic logic involved: the length of the needles must not be more than the circumference of the piece you would like to knit. So, to get an idea of the problem with using this 60 cm needle to knit mittens, measure your wrist, and then compare it to 60 cm. Having trouble with the metrics involved here (which undoubtable is what messed me up in the store)? 10 cm equals about 4 inches. So, basically, I puchased the ideal needle for either making a sweater collar or a pair of mittens for the Jolly Green Giant. Curse you, metric system (don't misunderstand, the metric system has a fabulously simple logic to it, but if you're not raised thinking in centimeters, you are bound to fail the sort of test I was put to in the yarn shop)!

So, the moral to this story is two-fold and oddly applicable to many of life's situations. First, learn to trust your instincts, not the speil someone else feeds you - your instincts are most likely not trying to trick you into shelling out a few extra bucks. Second, always try to enter into any transaction as well-prepared with the necessary tools and knowledge as possible. For me, in this case it was the metric system (or a measuring tape). In the spice shop, it was a simple translation.

So, could this be the forming of a New Year's Resolution? I never make them, but this year, I may just vow to be less gullible. Is that possible? Let's cross our fingers, and hope, for the sake of my pocket book, that it is.