Mayflowers

Did you ever have to sell stuff for fund raising as a child? You know what I mean, for soccer clubs, school, charity… I think we have all been there.

I have. Many times. Usually though, it was things that people actually wanted. That could be cupcakes, Christmas cards (during the appropriate season) and things like that.

It could also be things no one needed at all.

One thing that sticks out in my memory is when we had to go around selling mayflowers when we were around ten years old. Mayflowers were these little plastic pins, sold by school children in April. The money, as I recall it, went to a charity that fought poverty amongst children in Sweden. A small percentage of the revenue went to the school class that actually sold the mayflowers, making it almost mandatory for all children in the class to go around selling these flowers (it is called solidarity to your class mates, we were told). You were given a certain amount of mayflowers to sell in a determined amount of days. These had to be sold. Only the lucky few with extensive families with deep pockets could sell these things without actually having to work too much for it.

Most children would team up two and two in order to not make the task of selling mayflowers in the arbitrary Swedish April weather less tedious. We would be given certain areas or selling points in order to not get in each other’s ways.

Maybe it is my memories merging together into one big solid goo (I am told this happens with age) but I remember always being designated the same area, year after year. It was the apartment buildings in the area, row after row with these big scary grey buildings, functional and damn ugly in their 60’s architectural style. Housing apartments in all different shapes and dimensions, this neighborhood was the home to everything from families in all different sizes to students and all round crazy people. I especially remember this elderly lady who owned a ferret that she used to dress up like a baby. Needless to say, neither students nor families nor elderly ladies are in dire need of plastic mayflowers. Therefore, we would spend hours knocking on doors, trying to sell them.

Did people buy them because they wanted to support the charity? Hardly. I think they actually took pity on us. Two rosy-cheeked elementary school children, standing in their doorway, looking up with supplicating eyes… “Do you want to buy a mayflower?”

I wouldn’t say no.

In fact, I couldn’t.

Yesterday, coming out of the supermarket, two rosy-cheeked little girls jumped me at the door. Now, the mayflower business seems to have bloomed lately (pun not intended), because these little girls had very cool mayflower bags flung on their shoulders, displaying their merchandize (far from the cardboard boxes we had to our disposal). Even so, I recognized the panic in their eyes as they with one voice asked me if I wanted to buy a mayflower. I dug in my pocket for change and found that I had just enough for a mayflower.

In the car my non-Swedish boyfriend, genuinely puzzled, asked me why in the world I would spend money on a piece of plastic. It’s not like we need it. I smiled to myself. He doesn´t know how it feels to stand outside a supermarket, or knocking on doors for hours and hours on your spare time (playing time) trying to sell those pieces of plastic for charity. Poor girls.

I was actually sad I couldn’t afford two mayflowers.