in mustache, in elvish
"Birdie, don't you have anything that can fix this scar? The Line and Wrinkle Corrector didn't really make a difference."
Maddy called me one morning last campaign. She sighed into the phone, and I leaned against the refrigerator, called to mind's eye the small jagged circle between her eyebrows, the result of a roller rink accident twelve years in the past.
"I'm tired of wearing six layers of foundation. I wish I could afford laser surgery." She drummed fingers along a hard surface. I traced the shape of her scar along the cool metal appliance, hesitated, unsure what to say.
"Hey, Maddy. Why not just chuck it all? Why not give up trying to hide it? It's not a big scar, it's not dark, it's healed over a long time. Why pretend to be a fake magazine girl?"
It was the wrong response, not a good Avon Lady answer, but it's the only real thing I could think to say. The Avon Anew Clinical Line and Wrinkle Corrector was a longshot. I gave it to her, free, a gift of pore hope, handed it to her in my own scarred hands.
"Birdie, you don't understand." She hung up the phone.
I sent her a bag of apology Avon - samples of the newer skin corrector serums, a lipstick in classic rose, a grapefruit kiwi candle. She ordered more foundation. She said she was excited to try the new products. I sighed.
I thought about Maddy over the last couple of weeks. And I did something crazy this weekend in her honor, passed out my latest Avon brochure, but a new, improved Birdie-ized version, where every luscious-lipped airbrushed model sports a hand-drawn mustache and a slogan:
Just be you.
Rethink Perfect.
Be the brochure.
YOU radiate beauty. Yes. You.
I signed the brochures in Elvish, too, and I really couldn't tell you why. My phone number, my email in normal English, and then my name in funny looping hiccup script:
It's Holiday time, it's Fourth Quarter madness, it's the biggest, best time of the Avon year, and I'm scrapping tradition, making eyes meet the page in a way that means less money for me.
And... I really need the money. Why do I do this?
12:56:27 PM 
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