Dale Says

Janie has always hedged her bets, and her new line of business shows that she hasn’t lost her touch.

When we first met her she played the stock market, and she always had some deal going that was one step ahead of the rest of us. If the market was going up, Janie would hedge her bets and take money out of the market. If it was going down, Janie always had a stock that she bought that would go up.

In those days, Janie was a rising young executive at Bank of America. She got involved in a mess in their Nevada operation and wound up being sent back to San Francisco, and she retired shortly thereafter. When she started to find herself in her bathrobe at mid-day, she signed up with and started selling Amway. It was kind of cute for awhile — Janie’s new business — but then she started on us, one at at time, to buy and then to sell the stuff, and it became less tolerable. One friend was blunt enough to tell her, “Not only no, Janie, but hell no, and don’t ever bring it up again…” But the rest of us bought a few things and then stopped buying, and it was no longer cute.

Janie went to a lot of Amway meetings and conferences, and she would come home and tape inspirational phrases to her refrigerator. The last time I looked, Janie still had boxes of Amway products in her garage.

Janie’s next venture was to buy her own small business, managing properties for property owners in Scottsdale, Arizona, where she also sold Amway and became devout in an Evangelical Christian church. She tried to convert us to her new religion, because she feared we wouldn’t be able to join her in her heaven if we didn’t. During the 12 years she ran her property-management company we seldom saw her, as she worked seven days a week, and she was on the phone with owners and renters virtually around the clock.

Janie sold her business when God told her to, and we thought she would kick back and spend her new-found time with her friends and family, but we didn’t hear from her for quite awhile.

The first I knew of an impending Rapture or of Janie’s belief in one was when she came to stay with us a year or so ago. On the last morning of a several-day stay she gave us a book that predicted the impending end of the world (due to a world-wide financial meltdown and ensuing riots), and she told us about the Rapture and how she had prepared for the end of the world and the Rapture by buying and storing freeze-dried food and de-cholorinating her swimming pool (for drinking water). She seemed rather excited about it, and said she looked forward to the Rapture.

I’m sure she is somewhat disappointed it hasn’t happened.

The next we heard from Janie was when she moved from Arizona to Oregon. She was driving north through Oregon when God told her (in a loud voice) to stop and move there. She did, and then she went back to Scottsdale and had a couple of medical procedures. Apparently that’s where she ran into her new business.

Janie has announced that she now sells freeze-dried food through a start-up company called Thrive Life. It’s a pyramid business that relies on distributers to buy a lot and to sign up sellers under them.

That’s just like Janie — again hedging her bets. If the end of the world and Rapture do come, she will be well-stocked with freeze-dried food and she will have direct links to more. And if the end doesn’t come, Janie can support herself by selling freeze-dried food products to the rest of us.