Save Karyn

by Karyn Bosnak

  In television there are periods called sweeps, which occur every November, February, and May. During these months, shows air their best episodes and the ratings are scrutinized. Since most companies decide by December if they are going to renew a show for another season, November sweeps are crucial. And with Curtis Court on the edge of having decent ratings, even just a slight bump up in the numbers would be good.

  Despite things at work getting crazy, I went out of town the first weekend in October for my sister’s thirtieth birthday party. The whole family and a few friends met in Green Bay, Wisconsin, for a Green Bay Packers versus Chicago Bears football game. Things don’t get any more Midwestern than that.

  My sister wore cheese on her head, and my mom wore green and yellow beads around her neck. And me, well, I’m not much of a football fan, so I wore my Gucci sunglasses and people-watched. For added excitement, I gave my sister’s friend Kathy a makeover during halftime. I showed her how easy it was to make her lips look fuller with lip liner. No need for collagen injections when you have a good liner!

  For her birthday, I bought my sister the most beautiful picture frame at Bergdorf Goodman. I wanted to get her something special that she would always have, and the saleslady told me that this was the perfect gift. A guy named Jay Strongwater, who designed a whole collection of them, designed the frame. Some have precious stones in them, and others have enamel inlays. They look like little pieces of jewelry. The frame measured about two inches by two inches and was perfect for a small photo. At $350 it was pricey, but it was her thirtieth birthday and she deserved it. And they put it in such a cute box and wrapped it so nicely!

  When I got back on Monday, the November sweeps pressure had officially begun, and work became pretty intense as the pressure rose. I started working late and put in a few weekends. I even booked a great case that got a bit of press. The case involved two girls who were suing a dance club in New York called Club New York. Club New York was the club that became famous after being the scene of the Puff Daddy–Jennifer Lopez shooting. The two girls were at the club the night the shooting occurred, and claimed that their fur coats were stolen from the coatroom after chaos erupted. All the other court shows were trying to book the case, and I beat them to the punch and they appeared on Curtis Court. Puff Daddy didn’t come, but we got a little press nonetheless, and that made my boss happy.

  The more I worked, the less I saw Brad. And one day, he just never called again. Seriously. That’s what happened. There was no big blowup. There was no big breakup. One day I just realized that I hadn’t seen him or talked to him in weeks. I was sad, but I pushed any feelings I had toward the back of my mind because I needed to concentrate on work.

  November finally rolled around, and the staff patiently awaited the ratings every day. And each day we got the same news: there was no big improvement in the numbers. The show wasn’t bad enough to be canceled immediately, but it wasn’t good enough to be automatically renewed for another season either. So despite the less-than-stellar ratings, we continued to try to save Curtis Court, the little court show that could.

  Feeling sad on my way home from work one night, I stopped by Bloomingdale’s to see what I could find. I needed a little pick-me-up, and some new face lotion was just what I was looking for. Maybe I was working too many hours, or maybe it was the cool November air, but whatever it was, something was making my skin look not so radiant. And looking not so radiant made me feel not so radiant.

  While walking through the cosmetics department, I stopped by the La Prairie counter. I knew their cosmetics were super expensive, but I figured that must be the case because they worked. A plump, feminine-looking man was standing behind the counter.

  “Hello,” he said to me in a very high pitched voice as I walked up. “What can I help you with today?”

  “Well,” I started, “my skin looks just horrible lately, and I don’t know what to do about it. It just feels dry and is puffy and doesn’t glow like it used to.”

  “I can see,” he said. He could? I thought only I noticed it. I instantly became incredibly worried.

  “What should I do? Do I need an exfoliant? A lotion?”

  “Well, the first thing I would start with is an eye cream, because you are starting to get wrinkles,” he said.

  “I am?!” I shrieked. “Where?”

  “Oh, yes, honey, fine lines,” he said, turning a magnifying mirror toward me, “look.” I looked into the mirror and saw that he was indeed correct. I had fine lines around my eyes. This could very well be the worst day of my life, I thought.

  “These are the first wrinkles I’ve ever seen on my face,” I said with tears in my eyes. “I don’t even lay out. I’m always really good about protecting my skin. How could this happen?”

  “Oh, honey, it happens to the best of us,” he said, sticking out his hand for me to shake. “My name is Francis.”

  “Hi, Francis,” I said. “My name is Karyn.”

  “Well, Karyn, don’t worry, dear. We’re going to stop those wrinkles dead in their tracks and do something to help your lackluster appearance.”

  “My lackluster appearance?” I asked.

  “Honey, you are the one who said it, not me. I just pointed out your wrinkles. We’re going to fix it all though, don’t worry.”

  For the next hour, I listened as Francis explained all the La Prairie products to me and told me how they’d help my skin. He even gave me a mini-facial. According to him, I needed the eye cream, the face cream, the age-defying serum, and the gentle nonabrasive exfoliant. That would be good to start anyway. I decided to go for the gusto and buy the four products, because I had to feel pretty again. Feeling pretty was important to me. It did wonders for the self-confidence. And even after the mini-facial alone, I felt better. So I could imagine how great I’d feel and look after using the products every day.

  I handed over my Amex to Francis and told him I’d take the four products. It was an investment in my face. And a good face is priceless. And everyone knows that good skin when you are older starts with taking care of it while you are younger. And I was younger now. The products came to a whopping $594 with tax. I could barely look as I signed the receipt. But I was on my way to glowing again. And I needed to glow.

  FLOATING CHECKS

  Before I knew it, it was Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving’s not a huge holiday in my family, so I decided not to go home. I actually hadn’t been to a Thanksgiving dinner with my family in years. Ever since my Aunt Marge made moldy pie, in fact.

  Aunt Marge is my great-aunt, and every year since I was little, I would always look forward to her cherry pie on Thanksgiving. The whole family would. But then one year Aunt Marge cut her finger off while mowing the lawn. And ever since then, the pie making took a serious hit. Every year after that it tasted worse and worse, but I ate it. And finally one year, I bit into a nice piece of the pie and it didn’t taste so good. At the same time, my mom was in the kitchen and realized that the pie was moldy. Poor Aunt Marge had made it too early and let it sit on her windowsill for a week. And poor Karyn felt ill for days. That was my last Thanksgiving with the family. Every Thanksgiving after that I spent with Naomi and her family.

  But this year I decided to spend Thanksgiving with a college friend who now lived in New York. His name was Pearce, and we lived in the same dorm our freshman year. I recently got back in touch with him when I heard that he also lived in New York. Pearce is famous. Well, at least I think so. He designs doorknobs, but they are super-expensive doorknobs for the rich and famous. And recently he appeared on Martha Stewart Living. (Okay, maybe just the back of his head was on TV as she got a tour through the studio where he worked, but still….)

  I was supposed to meet Pearce and a couple of his friends at a restaurant in Greenwich Village called Ye Waverly Inn. I called ahead and found out that it was a prix-fixe dinner at $75 a person. So I figured with drinks it would cost me around $125. That Monday, I went to the bank and realized that I only had about $50 in my account.
I took it out and didn’t know where I was going to get the rest of the money. I didn’t go through the hassle of getting the Gift Cheques again, because all I needed was about $75. And I was going to get paid on Wednesday, but the money wouldn’t be available for me to take until Friday, because Thursday was a holiday. So I was screwed. Until I remembered that I could write a check at the local Food Emporium grocery store for $25 over the amount of whatever I bought.

  So after a little planning in my head, this is what I did: On Monday night, I went to the store and bought a pack of gum. When I got to the counter, I paid for the gum with a check for $25 over. The total came to $26.08. On Tuesday, I did the same thing. And then on Wednesday I did the same thing again, and now had $75 in my pocket. That plus the $50 from before would get me through Thanksgiving.

  But I also got paid on Wednesday, and deposited my check as soon as I got it. I knew the checks that I wrote at the grocery store wouldn’t go through until at least Friday, and by that time the first $100 from my paycheck would be available and would cover them. So I was set!

  Because I didn’t buy a plane ticket home, I splurged on a nice new outfit for Thanksgiving. And for a little change in scenery, I went to Bergdorf Goodman to buy it. It was so pretty! It was a green silk Cynthia Rowley button-down shirt/dress, and I wore it over a pair of black tight pants with my rhinestone belt. I was a big fan of the shirt/dress. It’s just a dress that buttons down the front and they’re just so cute! I now had two of them.

  The food at Ye Waverly Inn was okay, but you just can’t beat a home-cooked meal. Well, you just can’t beat a home-cooked meal minus the moldy pie. The turkey was a bit dry, and the potatoes didn’t have lumps in them, but it was okay.

  Throughout dinner, Pearce and I reminisced about old college times. He reminded me of the time we ran naked through Frat Park, and the time my cat accidentally caught on fire while walking too close to an open flame. (I’ll be honest—it wasn’t a candle. His roommate was lighting a fart on fire and the cat got too close. The little bugger ended up fine though, just had some singed whiskers—so don’t worry.) He also reminded me of the time that I spent my tuition money on clothes.

  “Oh my gosh, I forgot about that!” I said.

  “How could you forget? You almost couldn’t enroll the next semester because you hadn’t yet paid your tuition,” he said.

  He was right. My mom sent a check made out to me (big mistake) for my tuition, which was about $1,700 a semester. My bank account just so happened to be overdrawn at the time, so I couldn’t turn around and write a check to the university for $1,700 because it would have bounced, so I just left it in my checking account until I was able to pay it. But as time went by the $1,650 turned into $1,600. And soon enough the $1,600 turned into even less. Then one day shortly thereafter, I saw that one of my favorite clothing stores was having a big sale, and I spent the rest of it on clothes. I thought that I’d figure out a way to make the $1,700 back before the next semester, and even got myself a job to help do so.

  But before I knew it, the next semester rolled around and I didn’t have any money. So my mom sent me money for that semester’s tuition, and I used it to pay off the previous semester’s tuition, and it was a never-ending cycle. I finally graduated, but I was unable to receive my actual diploma because I didn’t pay my final semester’s tuition. When my mom asked where my diploma was, I told her that it got lost in the mail and I had to order a new one. A year later, the school finally ended up sending me to a collection agency, and I paid the $1,700 back. It was then that I, Karyn Bosnak, finally received my college diploma. You’d think I would have learned my lesson, but I didn’t.

  Pearce was also actually the first person who told me about how easy it was to get a credit card. I remember when we were freshmen, I wanted a pair of $250 Revo sunglasses. Remember those? Anyway, I didn’t have enough money for them, and I wanted them really badly.

  “Why don’t you get a credit card?” he said.

  “How can I get one of those?” I asked.

  “Anyone can get one. You can go sign up at a booth in the quad. You can even get a free T-shirt,” he said, laughing.

  “Really?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” he said. “And then you can get them and only have to pay thirty-eight dollars a month or so.”

  “It’s kind of like layaway, but you get to take the stuff home!” I said with excitement.

  “Exactly,” he answered.

  So I got a credit card, and I bought the sunglasses. Well, I charged them. And since then, I’ve always sort of looked at a credit card as a means to acquire things that I wasn’t able to afford.

  The total for dinner came to about $116 each, and I had just enough money to cover it. Afterward, I bid my farewell to Pearce and his friends and decided to go home to get a nice night’s sleep. I had a busy weekend ahead of me. I was completely behind in my “Buy and Return Credit Payment Management Plan,” as I now liked to call it, and needed to do some serious catching up.

  ALL I WANT FOR CHRISTMAS…

  While the Buy and Return Credit Payment Management Plan seemed like a good idea initially, it was sort of spiraling out of control very quickly. My monthly payment to American Express got less and less, as more payments in everyday life started to pop up.

  For one, I now had to make monthly payments to Jennifer Convertibles for the couch I bought. And I was a few months behind, so I had to send them almost $150 just to catch up. And while they were really eager to tell me about the no payment/no interest for three months, they forgot to tell me that the interest would be 24 percent when it did kick in. Yes, maybe I should have read it myself, but I didn’t. Even after I sent in the $150 payment, the balance was still higher than it was when I bought the couch because of late fees.

  And while I might have said that my American Express card was the only credit card that I had when I moved to New York, I should have rephrased that as the only credit card that I had that was open with credit on it when I moved to New York. I had three other cards, a Visa, a MasterCard, and a Marshall Field’s card, and I closed them before I moved, but still owed money on them. The total balance of those was about $3,100, and the monthly payments were about $150. It wasn’t much, but it was still $150. And for some reason, I had a real problem paying them all of a sudden.

  And with my monthly trips to the hair salon, and my regular bikini wax visits, and weekly manicures and pedicures, things really started to add up. I also had my cell phone bill and my cable bill.

  Also, I never seemed to be able to return as much stuff as I bought while on the plan. And with that problem, the whole thing seemed to do more harm than good. I would always bring things home and realize that they were just too cute to take back.

  For example, on a recent excursion, I bought a $1,000 winter coat. When I got it home I hung it in my closet, and like I said I would, I took it back the next day. But the next day when I returned it, I saw a $600 coat that I really, really liked. So after returning the other one, I bought the $600 one and kept it. If I wasn’t there returning the $1,000 coat, then I wouldn’t have seen the $600 coat and therefore wouldn’t have bought it. And then I had to get gloves and a hat to match too.

  Another time when I was in the purse section buying a nice $500 Coach purse that I was going to return, the friendly saleslady told me about how Friends & Family Day was coming up. And then, just to be nice, she gave me her discount card so that I too could save 15 percent on all my purchases. And it just so happened that right behind me was a super-cute brown leather BCBG purse with fringe that I had been eyeing for $250. But with her Friends & Family Day coupon the purse was only $212, and I couldn’t pass that up. It just had so much character!

  So the next day, when I returned the $500 Coach purse, I realized that my Friends & Family Day coupon was still valid, and so I bought a very practical black leather BCBG bowling bag. And that was something I could use every day.

  Another downfall of the Buy and Return Credit Payment Mana
gement Plan was that the salespeople at Bloomingdale’s were starting to recognize me and I was afraid that any day they would catch on to my plan, and somehow I’d be forbidden to shop at Bloomingdale’s forever.

  But the biggest problem with the Buy and Return Credit Payment Management Plan was that it seemed to really throw my perception off about what is expensive and what isn’t expensive. When you buy a coat at $1,000 and return it, one at $600 seems like a steal. The same thing happened with purses. Compared to a $750 Fendi, the $212 BCBG one was a bargain.

  I needed an intervention. I needed all this buying and returning to stop. I needed someone to save me. What I needed was another credit card. Not so I could buy more stuff, but so I could take out a cash advance and pay all of this horrendous American Express balance off. A balance that had grown to over $8,000. All I could afford to pay this month was $1,000, and buying and returning $7,000 worth of stuff seemed crazy. I didn’t know if even I could do it.

  Yes, all I wanted for Christmas was another credit card. A normal credit card this time, not one of these “charge cards” wannabes. I mean what really is the purpose of that anyway? If I had the money to pay for all the things I was buying then I wouldn’t have to “charge” them now, would I?

  And just like when God was listening to me when I needed to find a place to get my hair done, God was listening to me now too. When I got my mail that Saturday, I saw it: an envelope from Platinum Discover Card with a big stamp on the outside that said “Pre-Approved.” I opened it up and saw that it was true. I had been pre-approved with a credit line of $7,500! The letter said, “Transfer all your balances and get APR of only 7% for the first three months.” Thank you, God! I quickly filled out all the paperwork and sent it back to Discover. I sure hoped it worked and that the “Pre-Approved” envelope wasn’t a mistake.