Save Karyn

by Karyn Bosnak

  By the time I got to Judi’s séance, it was over. I was supposed to meet Randy there and he was waiting outside. We instead went to get something to eat.

  Later, when I got home, I was a call-in guest on FOX News Channel with Rick Folbaum. He was nice, and he did play the devil’s advocate a bit, but unlike the radio show the night before, he didn’t call me a twat.

  Saturday, August 3, 2002

  Today I did laundry. I went to the dollar store to get some more detergent and picked up some fabric softener while I was there. Got some toothpaste too. While at the Laundromat, I started wondering why and how things end up at the dollar store. Is something wrong with them? I then realized that the fabric softener was in Spanish, and it didn’t have one of those fancy “no drip” caps. It spilled all down the sides and all over my hands. It kinda sucked. Maybe that’s why.

  Sunday, August 4, 2002

  Today I used some really gnarly shower gel that I got as a Christmas gift. I was out of soap, and found the gel under my sink, way in the back. It was way in the back for a reason.

  By Sunday, 92,518 people had visited my website that week alone—the total hits so far had been over 200,000. And I received $1,352 in donations that week alone. Steve the computer guy had also been able to retrieve all my e-mails and sent them to me.

  Since our phone conversation, I’d called my dad a few times, but he hadn’t called me back. I didn’t know if he was angry or what. So I just kept updating my website.

  While doing my weekly update, I decided not to acknowledge the anti-Karyn websites anywhere on my website. I honestly didn’t want to give them the traffic. And I also didn’t want to give them what they were looking for, which was a reaction.

  The thing was, they may have been started to squash what I was doing, but all they did was make the story bigger. They created controversy. It made the story funnier in a way, and it made more newspapers want to do stories and more radio stations want me as a guest. That meant that more people would visit my site, and more people would give me money to help me pay off my debt. The only way I acknowledged them in my weekly update was this:

  I’ve said it before and I’m going to say it again. I know there are a lot of other people who need money more than me. I’m not a selfish idiot unaware of human suffering. I may be frivolous and have a shopping obsession, but I’m not blind to the world’s problems. And if you are offended by what I am doing, then by all means, go to a different website, please. I’m sorry that I don’t have some sob story to justify my debt, but I’m not going to make something up to somehow justify me asking for your help. And if shopping is the worst thing that I did, then lighten up. I wasn’t out killing people, robbing people, selling drugs, etc. I just bought too many shoes. That’s it. I like to look pretty.

  You know, there are all sorts of people out there. And everyone has a story. This is mine. People do what they need to do in life to get by. I try not to pass judgment. And you shouldn’t either. People are who they are. It’s where they came from. It’s what they know.

  So this week, don’t be so judgmental toward others. Look at them in the eye, see their soul, and accept who they are. That’s what makes this world a GREAT place. And learn YOUR story. Pick a mantra, say it aloud! My name is Karyn and I like to shop! Ahhh…. I feel better already…Peace.

  And again I believed it.

  $17,557.54 TOTAL DEBT July 28, 2002

  -$50.00 my money

  -$1,352.98 your money

  -$286.31 eBay sales

  $15,868.25 TOTAL DEBT August 5, 2002—WEEK 6

  SEVENTEEN

  THE DAILY Me-MAIL

  E-MAILS TO ME ABOUT ME—UPDATED DAILY!

  DATE: August 11, 2002

  FROM: Malcolm

  TO: Karyn

  SUBJECT: money

  U ACTUALLY EXPECT PEOPLE TO BUY YOUR STUFF FOR. THAT IS WHAT THEY ARE BASICALLY DOING. WHY DON’T U START LOOKING IN YOUR COUCH FOR CHANGE. I HEARD U ON THE RADIO (101.5) AND I CANT BELIEVE THEY WASTED THEIR AIR TIME ON U. U SPENT YOUR MONEY ON A RETARDED $500 GOOCHI BAG. HOW FREAKING LAME. YOU GOT YOURSELF IN DEPT GET YOURSELF OUT OF IT.

  FROM: Karyn

  TO: Malcom

  SUBJECT: Re: money

  Dear Illiterate Asshole,

  1) Yes, I actually expect people to buy my stuff. Not “my stuff for.” It’s nice stuff, so why shouldn’t people buy it? So you are right, that is what they basically are doing.

  2) I’ve looked in my couch for change, and there is none.

  3) I enjoyed being on 101.5, and as much as you think they might have wasted their time talking to me, you wasted your time listening to it, logging on to the Internet, going to my website, looking through my auctions, figuring out how to e-mail me, drafting your lame illiterate letter to me (I can’t imagine that actually took you that long), and pushing the send button on your e-mail. Now that seems like YOU wasted a lot more time on me than they did.

  4) “Goochi” is spelled “G-U-C-C-I”

  5) I got myself in “D-E-B-T” not “Dept,” unless you think I got lost in a department of some sorts—a department STORE maybe, but not a department.

  6) And I AM getting myself out of D-E-B-T.

  So thanks for the advice.

  I actually enjoyed wasting my time writing you back, and I sure hope you can read it. Have your grandma help you sound out the words…It’s not as tough as it looks.

  Thanks,

  Karyn

  PS—SEND A BUCK IF YOU CAN—THAT’S ONE DOLLAR—UNO—100 PENNIES—4 QUARTERS

  WEEK 7: THE INTERNATIONAL MEDIA FRENZY

  Monday, August 5, 2002

  Today I gave myself a manicure. The quick-dry top coat was really old and kind of goopy, but I used it anyway. Now my nails are lumpy.

  Tuesday, August 6, 2002

  Today I returned a pair of black pants that still had the tag on them to Banana Republic. I mean, how many pairs of black pants can one have? I have a million. I also had some leftover money on an old Banana Republic gift certificate. So, I used both credits to buy a hot little number to wear to an important meeting today, and didn’t spend one dime. Kick butt.

  Every single week since I’d started the website, things just got bigger and bigger. Every time something happened, something else happened that “one-upped” it. This week, a story had run in the Agence France-Presse, which is kind of like the Associated Press in France. And needless to say, the article ended up everywhere, sparking an international media frenzy of sorts. Stories about the website were in newspapers all over the world: the Mail & Guardian and the Cape Times in South Africa; Correio Braziliense in Brazil; the Nation in Thailand; Today in Singapore; the India Times, the Indian Express and the Daily Afternoon in India; Korrespondent in the Ukraine; Der Standard in Austria; Nu and de Volkskrant in the Netherlands, the Edmonton Journal and Winnipeg Free Press in Canada; The Gold Coast Bulletin, MX, and a second story in the Sunday Herald Sun in Australia; the New Zealand Herald in New Zealand; the Daily Express, Internet Business News, Telecom-worldwide, the Metro, Independent of Sunday, Western Daily Press, and the Evening Herald of Plymouth in the UK; Der Spiegel, which is like Time magazine in Germany; and are you ready for this? The Oman Daily Observer and the Gulf Times in Qatar—two newspapers in the Middle East—as in Saddam Hussein. Every one of them ran a story about savekaryn.com—the cheesy low-budget website that I created in my apartment in Brooklyn.

  I got e-mails from people in India telling me they knew how I felt. I got an e-mail from a girl in Israel telling me that she too was in debt. Some of the stories said that the website had a cult following. They called me ingenious and enterprising. Some other stories talked about Bob and Ben and dontsavekaryn.com. One reporter said that the fact the website was working said a lot about human nature and random acts of kindness. Ain’t that the truth?

  Aside from the international press that week, stories ran in the Dallas Morning News, the Seattle Times, the Salt Lake Tribune, the Idaho Statesman, the Sunday Gazette Mail i
n North Carolina, the Greenville News in South Carolina, the Colorado Springs Business Journal, the Press & Dakotan in South Dakota, the Morning Journal in Ohio, the Mobile Press in Alabama, the Wichita Eagle in Kansas, the Herald & Review in Illinois—random papers everywhere started doing stories.

  The thing is that I never sought out an interview. I never called anyone and said, “Will you do a story about my website?” If I did speak to a journalist who wrote an article, then it was because they contacted me. It was so funny! The traffic kept increasing, the donations kept increasing, and the interview requests kept increasing. I started doing like six or seven radio interviews a day. I even did radio shows in Australia, Ireland, the UK, South Africa and Spain. It was so fun!

  And every day I woke up feeling nervous because my name and address were floating around on the Internet, and I was just waiting for a journalist to pick up on it, and hunt me down and blow my cover.

  And then, in the midst of all the craziness, I got an e-mail from Register.com, saying that they were going to take my website down because I provided false information when I registered it. Meaning my name, address and phone number. But obviously I didn’t want to give them the correct information because anyone could look it up. I called the guy who’d given me my money back to see if he could help me, and he said no because it was the legal department that was threatening me, not the accounts payable department. So I had to figure something out.

  What made me most angry was that someone turned me in. You know, someone who hated me looked up my information and contacted Register.com to tell them that it was incorrect. It was like every time something cool would happen, something bad would happen to bring me back down.

  For the address, I just used my PMB address. But for the phone number, I had no choice but to get a second line. The cheapest way that I found to do it was to get a second cell phone with its own number that shared minutes with my normal cell phone. It was $20 extra a month. For the name, I called up Register.com and asked them if I could register the website to my attorney’s name, and they said yes. So I registered it to G. Rosen, which was the name of the partner at my friend Jodi’s agency. He was an attorney, just not my attorney. I didn’t have one. But it worked. And it was funny, because later that week I started to get a ton of calls to that cell phone. And a ton of e-mails that asked who G. Rosen was.

  That week, in addition to the letters people sent to my PMB box, I started getting care packages. I got a water filter to put on a bottle of water, antistress bath gel, shampoo, conditioner, soap, deodorant, coupons for free Starbucks, a $10 gas card to Shell (which I used to buy some food at the mini-mart), tea, lottery tickets, stamps (to mail my bills), cute necklaces and pins, pens and pencils, Post-it notes, and more mixed tapes and CDs. I got microwave popcorn, a big box of cheese-and-cracker snacks, and jars of Ragu sauce and some macaroni and cheese. I got a hunk of Tillamook cheddar cheese from two college guys who felt sorry for the sad state of the grilled cheese in my apartment. They even sent me a picture of themselves, giving me thumbs-up while holding the brick of cheese. But to top it off, they put a black bar across their eyes like the one on my website covering Elvis’s eyes. People also sent me their fashion and beauty magazines that they were done reading, like Glamour and Marie Claire.

  I kept leaving messages for my dad about all the press I was getting, but he still hadn’t returned any of my phone calls. But what was weird was that I received an envelope filled with a collector’s-edition hat and watch from the 2002 Winter Olympics in the mail. And it was sent to my home address. Inside the envelope was a typed note that said,

  Please accept these items as a donation for your eBay sales.

  Good luck, Benny (I’m a friend of your dad’s).

  So my dad couldn’t have been too mad at me. I mean, he was telling his friends about my website. So I listed the items.

  And in addition to the American money I received, I also started getting foreign money like euros, Canadian dollars, Korean wons, Chilean pesos, and some Chinese yuans. And of course an envelope filled with monopoly money as a joke.

  So since people were tuning in, I kept up with my Daily Bucks…

  Wednesday, August 7, 2002

  Tonight I had a friend from out of town come visit. She stayed in a hotel. I went to visit her and took the mini shampoo and bath gel. She’ll get more tomorrow. They smell nice.

  Thursday, August 8, 2002

  Today I canceled my gym membership. I owed them two months of past dues, so I haven’t been able to go for the last two months anyway. By canceling my membership, I am saving myself $65 a month. I can run outside instead.

  Friday, August 9, 2002

  Because I can’t afford a facial and I need one, I put tomato slices on my face. I heard they make a good face mask. But they burned, so I took them off and rinsed with cold water. I saved myself $100, but my face stayed really red for a while.

  And kept up with my e-mails…

  DATE: August 9, 2002

  FROM: BigFatKoi

  TO: Karyn

  SUBJECT: Cheaper than membership to a porn site

  I’m giving you $1.99 because it’s cheaper than membership to a porn site. ’Cause basically all a porn site does is give you a place to fantasize. So I can send you a couple bucks and fantasize about the way you would thank me. Hopeit’s worth the money to know what I’ll bethinking about tonight. p.s. nice rack

  FROM: Karyn

  TO: BigFatKoi

  SUBJECT: Re: Cheaper than membership to a porn site

  Dear BigFatKoi,

  Thanks for the buck 99. And I’m glad you like my rack.

  And I kept listing tons of stuff on eBay, which had been going really well. In addition to the Big Ticket Items, I started selling books, magazines, anything and everything. I think a lot of people preferred to buy something—even if they didn’t want it—rather than just give me money. And listen to this: I sold a Cynthia Rowley green silk dress in a size 8, and got e-mails from people calling me a “fat ass” because I wore a size 8. How mean is that? Anywho…

  Saturday, August 10, 2002

  Today I went to Starbucks. I know what you are thinking—I fell off the wagon. But I didn’t. I had a coupon for a free frappucino courtesy of WKTU-FM in NY. The guy there sent me 4 of them. Thanks! I even treated my roommate to one for putting up with me during these meek times. Since it was around noon, I counted the frap as breakfast AND lunch, aka brunch. So I paid nothing AND saved myself an additional $8 for skipping the meals. Thanks! Rock on!

  Sunday, August 11, 2002

  Today I decided to wear my disposable contacts for another week. I’ve been wearing the same pair for a month now, because I ran out and have to order new ones. I was going to order some new ones today, but I’m waiting for a check to clear and don’t have any money. So another week with dry eyes I go…Yesterday I had a close call and dropped one on the bathroom floor. But I found it. They are kind of dry and I blink a lot when I wear them. People think I’m winking at them, but I’m not.

  I know it would be cheaper if I just wore my glasses, but I get confused when I wear my glasses. Have you ever tried to grocery shop while wearing your glasses after you’ve been wearing contacts for a while? WOW! I feel like I’m on drugs! The perception is all funky, I drop things. I reach for the shelf, but just grab air. I usually end up leaving empty-handed and frustrated. Trust me, New York definitely does not want me walking the streets with my glasses on. I’d bump into people, knock them down, and then that could start a riot…I NEED MY CONTACTS.

  By the end of the week, I had received 146,994 hits and $1,391 in donations. And I’d decided to sell my brown BCBG purse with fringe. It was really difficult to let it go, but I had no choice. It was either that or my Gucci, and I wasn’t ready to give that one up yet. It was kind of difficult to part with some stuff because I had memories in things. You know? It wasn’t as easy as it looked. That week, I wrote this in my weekly update:

  I’ve been asked this quest
ion a lot this week…If you could do it all again, would you? The obvious answer is “No. If I could turn back time, I would never run up that debt again.” But I don’t feel that way. I am a person that has to learn from my mistakes. You can’t tell me something is bad, I need to experience it on my own and have it be bad to me. I need to make mistakes to learn. I have always been that way. It’s who I am.

  I lived a great, fun life being frivolous. I have memories, just like this purse, that I will have forever. So when I part with things like this, I need to remember and distinguish that I’m not parting with the memory, but with the purse. There’s a big difference.

  So, this week, make mistakes, learn your lesson, and learn how to live life YOUR way. You’ll come out okay in the end. I have faith…

  $15,868.25 TOTAL DEBT August 5, 2002

  -$132.76 my money

  -$1,391.73 your money

  -$189.66 eBay sales

  $14,154.10 TOTAL DEBT August 11, 2002—WEEK 7

  WEEK 8: HOW MY GRANDPA BLEW MY COVER