Two Truths and a Lie

By Mel King

Alrighty folks
We’re gonna play a little game
Called Two Truths
And a Lie

It’s going to be about jobs.
Again.
Humor me.
This narrative poem
Concludes my employment trilogy

Now two of these jobs
I’ve actually done
It’s your job
To spot the other one

Don’t rush – take your time
I can wait
But should you find yourself compelled to take the bait –

Was I once a cooking presenter?
Appearing in your living room
At dinner time
My recipes direct to your little plug-in box
Don’t sit too close – you’ll fry your mind

OR

Was I a record-beating Tupperware slinger?
A district champion, even still?
With sales-figures no-one ever beat
And I dare say never will?

OR

Did I dress like a clown
And make a ferris wheel go round?
Sell some showbags, and some junk food
And help sweep up the show-grounds?

Have a guess before I go on
Which job seems least likely to you?
Probably all of them
Given they all involve talking to people
And going outside
Which are things I seldom do

Still, just one answer is correct
I did not always hide inside you see
Writing poetry
and getting wrecked

Take a moment to record your choice
Before you read the great reveal

The sordid truth unsealed –

Now I was a carny for a time
I admit that much is true
But not one carny task I listed
Did I ever actually do

The other two
I did as one
In a feat of maximum efficiency
Look for the laziest person in the room
Stacking masks and hacking tasks
That person’s me, I guarantee

So Tupperware I sold
Friend don’t you roll your eyes
It’s rude
You’ll never beat my sales record
With that crap attitude

I didn’t sell that much,
It wasn’t volume that mattered though
It was what I sold
The flagship piece
That made my peers say
Woah!

The expensive, hard to sell
Microwave Stack Cooker
And in my hands, boy, it sold well

$129.99 in 2004
It didn't matter how many anyone else sold
Cause I sold heaps bloody more

What’s a Stack Cooker? How’d you sell so many?
How many did you sell anyway?

Well lets answer one question at a time friend
There’s no rush to get to the tale’s end
I’ve literally got all day

So what’s a Stack Cooker? I hear you ask
Well, it's an expensive plastic thing
You put three meals in it at once
And nuke it till the microwave goes bing

I was a chef before I got preggers, see
Well, a cook abroad, employed as a chef
But when I came back to Australia
A single parent to be
Needing work immediately
I'm sorry, things have changed love.
You can’t cook here anymore
Unless you waste a whole fucking year of your life
Completing a tedious certificate four

Yeah nah
Not for me

Teach me to do something
I’ve been teaching people to do
For over ten years
And charge me money for it too?
Will you?

You can stick that in your stack cooker.

Now pyramid selling’s crap, sure
But quick commissions are something else
You buy your kit, for four hundy say
Then your mum has a party
She and her friends buy a heap of shit they don't need
And Bob’s your uncle, you’re away
But we did something extra special
On my mum’s Tupperware party day

She wanted to try out that stack cooker
So I said ‘why don’t we give it a whirl
But I’ll cook for the lot of yas
You just invite the girls.’

Now the recipe book was probably
The best part of the deal
I still have it
It’s a banger
You know the mix and match type
Split thrice, like a triple decker sanga
But these recipes, mate, I’m telling you
They were fully worth the hype

So I don’t feel I was cheating really
With years of commercial cooking under my hood
Because the cooker wasn’t much really
But damn the recipe book was good.

Anyway those ladies, they bought cookers
And then so did their friends
I sold cooker after cooker
And thought
Shit hot!
This party never ends!

Around 30 bucks for me, each cooker
Plus all the other crap they bought
Four or five hundy every party
Plus a meal
Mate, this level of entrepreneurship cannot be taught

I always led with the pumpkin gratin
You cannot miss with that delightful thing
Then I’d push the curry
Cause that was nice
But we need the third dish to make the pudding
So pretty please, host, cook some rice?

They always said yes.
And didn’t complain
Cause dead set
That chocolate raspberry pudding
Was freaking insane.

I flew high for a while, friends
I often even took my kid
She’d sit in someone’s lap
And watch me cook and talk
While she did what toddlers did

But I flew too close to the sun
Everyone had a cooker now, it seemed
Lids cracked
And ladies called
To invoke Tupperware’s lifetime guarantee

So, that was it for me

My mum still has her Stack Cooker
And I’m jealous, if I’m truthful
Cause my kid burnt popcorn in mine
And it melted
When she was, you know, youthful

But when nostalgia makes me yearn
For three meals all at once
I still recall the secrets
Of those sacred stacking ways
And I can Jenga it with Decor
And re-live my glory days

Mel King is a Geelong based writer of sci-fi, horror and comedy.
Mel can be found at:
Mel King's Haunted Words
or on facebook
or by email at melissakingauthor@gmail.com