Sparkity Bonkins

By Refried Bean

This book is a novel about a young advertiser named Sparkity Bonkins who quits her job after her ad agency has a child genetically engineered to prefer a certain brand of soda. A few years later, Sparkity discovers that same child at a baseball game with a group from a children’s home, and she starts to help the child while also dealing with her own struggles working and praying for people at a dime store. This story is full of jokes and ideas and explores human experiences of faith, hope, kindness, and love during difficult times.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Refried Bean
• Release date: Jun 20, 2016
• ISBN: 9781311548740

Refried Bean

Refried Bean is from Greenville, SC. Refried worked in a bookstore for twelve years and has an M.F.A. in Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Refried now lives in the Bronx near a Stop and Shop.

Book preview

Sparkity Bonkins

By Refried Bean

Copyright 2016 by Refried Bean

Distributed by Smashwords

Acknowledgements

Special thanks to Nancy Parker, Ray Blackston, Guin Calnon, Judith Hartzell, Andrea Merrell, Michael George, Emily Park, Melinda Walker, Allison Pennington, Jim Hamlett, James Raff, Janice Robinson, Crossway Bookstore, Greenville Downtown Airport, and all of the members of Greenville Christian Writers Group.

Thanks also to Catherine and Adrian Polit, Hallie Bertling, Robyn Andrews, Claire Bateman, Lauren Bedsole, Elizabeth Leverton, Belinda Jenkins, and Ariel Jones.

Thank you Bonnie Drewniany and the University of South Carolina Journalism School.

Thank you Jess Row, David Jauss, and Vermont College of Fine Arts.

Thank you so much to my managers, coworkers, and friends from Barnes and Noble.

Thank you also to Taco Bell, Burger King, Wendy’s, Waffle House, Chick-fil-A, and all the other restaurant and grocery store people who have helped me get through each day.

Special thanks to all my English, Journalism, and Language Arts teachers and to the church pastors and leaders who have taught me so much.

Thank you to all my friends, family, and teachers, and everyone else who has helped me.

Glory, praise, and thanks to God and to Jesus Christ who has been given all authority in heaven and earth.

For my beloved friends and coworkers

from Barnes and Noble,

and for all my students, campers, and other kids

who helped me have a happy life.

The pitcher cries for water to carry, and a person, for work that is real.

-Marge Piercy

Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; you who have no money, come, buy, and eat.

Isaiah 55:1

Chapter 1

I want you to know that while his parents would probably admit that they tried to sell his soul, you, as a consumer, may also have had a little something to do with Donald Farrell’s hardships. Me, I was just doing my job.

The whole thing started soon after I finished college. I was trying to get a job at Wrigley-Epstein Advertising in Greenville, South Carolina. You may already know this, but Greenville has been called the buckle of the Bible belt. Prayer is our main export. It’s true. We’ve got steeples shooting up from every corner. Let’s put it this way. If I was a giant, I’d avoid walking on Greenville. Really, I’d watch my step in the south, period.

Fortunately, there are also ad agencies in Greenville. The interview at Wrigley-Epstein was my fifth. I had already been rejected by all the ad agencies in the town where I went to college. I really had no problem getting interviews for copy writing positions, because at the top of my resume, I had typed, Oh, they’ll buy what I tell them to buy. Creative directors kill for that sort of comedy. The thing is, once I had landed the interviews, I had a hard time clicking with the interviewers. Let me tell you advertising-job-seekers the cold hard truth: having a dad who used to be the grapes in the Fruit of the Loom commercials doesn’t guarantee you anything.

Wrigley-Epstein was a pretty new agency. Some of the people around here who keep up with city issues will say that it’s part of the Yankee migration down south. I say, who cares? There’s no such thing as too many advertisers.

My interview there was very different from my interviews at other places. I walked in at 11:55 for my noon interview and was greeted by Sam Wrigley himself.

I’m Sam, he said, offering me a handshake.

I’m Sparkity, I said. I was really funny in middle school. Instead of looking him in the eye, I looked at the floor and shook his left hand, just to show him how creative I was. That’s the sort of thing you have to establish ASAP when you’re going for a copy writing job. Any advertiser will tell you that if you dress up, shake hands, and say clichés like, Nice to meet you, you’ve pretty much kissed your advertising career goodbye. Admen like people who think outside the box. People who show up for interviews covered in tapioca pudding. People who fake having Torette’s Syndrome and can still play it off when they find out that the agency’s president’s son has it in real life. People who say they’ve worked for Saatchi and Saatchi when really they’ve only had one job: scraping the gum off shoes that are donated to Goodwill. People who put that gum in their mouths and chew it just to get attention. You know who we are. Creative Geniuses.

I could tell by the way Wrigley looked at my purple wristbands that he already liked my style.

Why are you carrying luggage? he asked as he led me into a conference room.

It’s my portfolio, I said, heaving the two green suitcases on the table. Most of the creative directors out there will say that you should limit your portfolio size to ten to fifteen samples, but I think if they were pressed hard enough, they would all admit that they wouldn’t want to miss seeing the work you did for your middle school yearbook.

Don’t tell Helen Keller jokes. Don’t tell Helen Keller jokes, I thought to myself. It’s one of those mistakes you can make so easily in a job interview. Take it from me.

Oh, I’ll have the creative director take a look at your portfolio in just a few minutes, said Wrigley. "First I’d like to tell you a little bit about this position. We’re in the process of growing this company. Last year, we joined the Ad Federation, and we outgrew our old building. We’ve just acquired four new clients, and we’re still pitching for new business. We just won Piedmont Bank, Holbrook Paper Company, Greenville Packaging, and some of Boyle Bottling Company’s business.

Why did Helen Keller’s dog run away?

Excuse me?

Uh, nevermind. Do you want to hear an elephant joke? I asked.

What? He looked at me kind of weird. I guess I should have saved it for the creative director. But it was too late.

How are elephants and plums alike?

He said nothing.

They’re both purple, except for the elephant. I laughed. Loudly. It took me a second for me to regain my composure. Go on, I said. What were you saying about new clients?

He leaned back in his chair and took a deep breath. He looked kind of like a bald Steve Martin with bushy eyebrows and an extra forty pounds. I told him so. His face got red.

As I was saying, we’ve got these new clients, and we need enough writers and art directors to make their ads and still crank out work for our new business pitches. We are really fortunate to have such a variety. Some agencies specialize in one business. We’re less likely to get sick of our work.

Why do you only have part of the Boyle’s account? I asked.

Have you heard of Boyle’s bottling company? he asked. Of course I had. I tried to hide the guilt that seized me. I had been fighting a crippling Boyle’s Root Beer addiction since my freshman year in college. I talked to my mom about how ashamed I was for always drinking root beer in the morning instead of orange juice like everyone else. She said that drinking it didn’t make me a weirdo. She said that feeling ashamed about it made me a weirdo. I wish she would use the word wackadoodle instead of weirdo. It’s a little softer.

No, I haven’t heard of it. I said. I don’t even like root beer.

"Hmm. Well, Boyle’s root beer is very popular in this region. They also sell cola, and they are just now coming out with an orange drink, a carbonated fruit punch, and the drink we are going to market, which is Blue Fizz. It’s berry flavored.

Why not handle their root beer account as well? I asked nonchalantly.

"Boyle’s bottling company is dividing their business among several agencies. They want the brands for each flavor to be distinct. If you ask me, one agency could make this happen, but they’ve decided to put each drink in different hands. If you work here, you’ll probably be spending most of your time working on the Blue Fizz account, though you may help out with some of our other business.

Oh, I think it would be fun to work on the Blue Fizz account, I said. I love blue stuff. I was about to tell him the story about the time I painted my old dog’s toenails blue when the creative director walked in. He looked like a short, military Steve Martin with glasses— you know… those glasses that creative directors wear.

John Baker, he said, smiling and extending his right hand. Was he kidding?

Sparkity Bonkins, I said, going for his left hand. He did not shake it.

What’s in the suitcases? he asked, stealing a glance at Wrigley before looking at me.

It’s my portfolio, I said. I started unlatching one of them.

No rush, he said. I’ll take a look at your work in just a minute. I may even keep some samples to look at, and we can give them back to you when you turn in the project we give you.

A project?

Yes. We’re giving all of our applicants creative briefs for each of our four newest clients. You’ll pick three and create some ads for each one. We’ll just need rough sketches, of course. I’ll give you the packet when we’re through with the interview. First tell me this. What made you decide to choose advertising as a career?

Same reason as everyone else. I have a crush on Mr. Clean. My face reddened. I couldn’t believe that this guy had just extracted my deepest, dirtiest secret.

He smiled. No, seriously.

To tell you the truth, I was glad he didn’t believe me. I took full advantage of my second chance.

Well, there are farmlands and meadows in other countries, even in this country, that don’t have a single billboard anywhere in sight. You can walk down a dusty road for thirty miles without seeing one ad. There are no fliers, no telemarketing phone calls, no neon signs- no nothin’. I think that’s wrong, and I’d like to help change that. Just because you’re a farmer doesn’t mean you don’t care about car insurance and cell phone minutes. I can’t imagine looking out over a field of flowers and not having a reminder that I live in a civilized world. I just think we city people and suburbanites take our billboards for granted.

The two men were silent. I think they admired my passion.

Besides, I fit the writer profile. You know— violent mood swings, short attention span, unconquerable addictions, weird habits, inexplicable eccentric behavior. I spent the whole day yesterday lying face down on my bed listening to Pink Floyd sing ‘Comfortably numb.’ Very Virginia Woolf, if you ask me. As for eccentricity, I marinate my Gardenburgers in Cheerwine, I have a great band-aid collection, I frequently cover my entire hand in Elmer’s glue and peel it off, and let’s see…

So, uh, tell me about some of your favorite ads. What, in your opinion, makes a great ad great?

I think what makes a great ad great is when people are thirsty and the giant smiling pitcher of Kool-Aid bursts through the wall and offers everyone some Kool-Aid. I think it is amazing that advertisers are able to capture those moments on video.

Baker wrote something down, and Wrigley shuffled through his papers. I figured they both knew right off that I was the right girl for the job. It says here on your resume that you’ve worked at Toys R Us for the past few Christmas seasons. What was that like?

What are you insinuating? I asked. Are you accusing me of stealing Beanie babies? Because I didn’t. I didn’t take any of them. I didn’t even need Inky the Octopus. I already had him.

Things were tense for a second. John Baker broke the ice. Well, let’s go ahead and have a look at some of your work.

I took a deep breath. Things were going well so far.

I had a lot of trouble opening all of the locks on the first suitcase. It probably wasn’t necessary to secure it as tightly as I had, but you know what they say about the ad business being all cutthroat and everything. You take a big risk by even showing someone your ideas in a job interview.

So John, I said, jiggling the lock. What’s red and white on the outside and gray on the inside?

He just sat there.

Give up? An inside out elephant.

The lock finally sprang open. I lifted the top of the suitcase and beamed with pride as they stared at the contents with blank expressions.

I sifted through the drawings, the scripts, the homemade hand puppets, the ads I had done for class projects, and all of the writing samples filed in the side pocket. I wasn’t sure what I should show them first.

What’s this all about? John asked, picking up my biggest piece of art. It was an acrylic painting of a giant, armless, googly-eyed marionette coming out of the sky to lick a grazing cow.

Oh, I call that ‘cowlick.’ It’s depicting the Free-will/Predestination paradox. See, the puppet is freely choosing to lick the cow, but the strings coming from the sky indicate that he isn’t there by accident. Mere circumstance did not lower this creature to the ground. It’s not by chance that he is positioned close enough to get his licks. Before the very foundations of the universe were laid…

What do you have in the way of ads?

Well, let’s see. Oh, here’s my dog obedience school campaign. I handed Baker the folder. He held up an ad so Wrigley could see it too.

Smart Pet Obedience School. Nobody wants his best friend to wiz on the carpet, he read. He and Wrigley both seemed to wince. I wondered if my ad had reminded them of some embarrassing incident. He went through the others silently. I wished I had used a different design. On every single one I had just Photoshopped in a picture of my parents’ beagle crouching in the corner with his tail between his legs. Baker finally came to the last one.

Sit. Fetch. Roll over. If your husband can do it, your dog certainly can, he read. Smart Pet Obedience School. He closed the folder and placed it aside.

Hey, here’s one for a florist, I said. Dogs…flowers…. really, anything is my specialty except celery. I don’t like celery, but I’ll advertise for anything else. I put my florist ads on the table.

See? I said. Blossom’s Florist: the best buds for your best buds. Get it? Buds? Like flower buds for friends?

Clever. He read the next one aloud himself. A rose by any other name actually wouldn’t smell as sweet.

That’s based on Shakespeare, I told him. The British guy who was married to the Bronte sisters.

Yes, I get it. I get it. Hmmm.

Here. Let me show you my M&M campaign. I started digging through all of my masterpieces. I couldn’t remember which suitcase I had put it in. It was definitely the best thing in my portfolio. It was a group project for my Marketing Communications class senior year. We had to add a product to the list of products already offered by a brand and then create a marketing campaign for it. Our group did a mock campaign for espresso flavored M&Ms. For our ads, we decided to have the tan M&M be the spokesM. As you may have noticed, the tan M&Ms disappeared when they started putting red M&Ms back in the packages. We thought we’d have the tan one come back from vacationing in South America sporting a mustache and a poncho. Our commercial storyboards all featured him trying to sell his coffee M&Ms by imitating famous