Karen Fulks

I was eighteen when I got my first car – a white Corvair…and the back seat folded down!!! My first thought was: I am 18, I have a car and college doesn’t begin for a month – I should take a vacation. So, I did!

I’m from Peoria, IL and decided to drive south. I heard that Shawnee National Forest was at the southern tip of Illinois and hey, I had a sleeping bag and a back seat that folded down!!

I still feel the excitement of driving by myself, going to parts unknown. What should have taken me a little over 3 hours took me 6 hours. Why? I discovered antique stores, thrift stores, flea markets, church bazaars and piles of everything you can think of on front lawns with signs that said, “make me an offer.” What the WHAT???  Peoria didn’t have these, or if they did, I never noticed (sure enough, when I returned, I started looking around-they/antique stores, etc. are everywhere)!

I felt as if I was in my Grandparents basement, looking through boxes of memories-I was ecstatically happy. And THEN…and THEN…I was beyond ecstatically happy…I found a business card (see photo above) and it was only 50cents.  

I was 18, I had no idea what I wanted to do, so how about being a Listener? Right? How hard could that be? It took me the next 50 years to find out how truly difficult it is to JUST LISTEN. I first had to learn how not to talk all the time (yeah, THAT was brutal!).

The card is posted above my computer where I look at it every day. And every day I think, sure, I could be a Listener, but at $3/hour? I’m still debating.