Elna Baker (3:54)
So I moved to New York to do acting and I never, I auditioned. I never, I've actually still, I've never been cast once in anything. But the first acting job I actually was able to get was as a toy demonstrator at FAO Schwartz. And it's an acting job. You work retail, but basically you have to audition. You read a monologue by Princess Pretty, and then for two weeks you have to rotate from toy to toy so they have confidence that you can do this. And there's like the fun toys. Like, I like being on jewelry because I would just make earrings for myself all day. And you're supposed to give them to the kids. I never did. But then there were like sucky toys, like band in the box where it's like maracas, a tambourine and clapper. And you do that for eight hours. Worst band ever. Or there was the toy veterinarian kit, where you have like a stuffed animal and you'd have to interrupt families as they go through the store and you're like, spot is sick. Can you help me figure out what's wrong with Spot? Which is like, you know, basically like you and your family want to be left alone. But I'm an actor. Mortifying. But after two weeks, I got assigned to the most high profile of the toys. It was the Lee Middleton doll collection. And I don't know if any of you have seen these dolls, but basically they're weighted in the head and the bottom so that they flop like newborn babies. And it's so creepy. And I worked on the second floor in the adoption center, which was this cottage that they built, and there were all these incubators and incubators of the babies. And there was a white picket fence around it and two rocking chairs. And a typical day of work would go as follows. You know, parents and their children would look at these dolls and then if they were serious about adoption, we would open the white picket fence and escort the prospective parent, usually like a seven year old girl, into one of the rocking chairs. And we had to conduct an adoption interview. And again, I'm in like a nurse's uniform with a whole, you know, everything. And it would begin, do you promise to love and care for this baby? Will you read to the baby? Will you change the baby's diaper? And the little girls would always answer, you know, yes. And then you would get to the last question, what would you like to name the baby? And there was always like, you know, Princess Tiffany of Fairy Flowerland. And you would write that on a birth certificate and hand it to the parent and then say, now all you have to do is pay the adoption fee, wink, wink. Which was like $120. And you know, we were instructed not to use. You couldn't say purchase or cost or buy because that would break the illusion of the world. And the other thing that typically when it gets slow at work, you can talk with your co workers. I worked with three other nurses. But that would also break the illusion of the world. So if we weren't working with a customer, we had to always be holding, rocking or bouncing. The display baby doll. The display baby doll was on display for a reason. Something horrible happened in the factory. On the day of its conception, its head weighed five pounds more than all the other babies heads. So you would pick and its head would just flop back violently and its hands had been molded together so it looked like it had flippers. So you pick it up, the head would flop back and the flippers would fly up. And it looked like a tabloid monster baby, which is how it earned its nickname. We called it Nubbins. And because Nubbins wasn't up for adoption, he didn't even have an incubator. He was kept in a cupboard, which was like so disturbing because he looked realistically dead. You just open the cupboard and downward dock. Dead baby. You'd have to scoop him up and pretend that you cared for him. So these dolls were really expensive. So for most of September, October, we weren't really selling them, which meant that we spent a lot of time holding, rocking and bouncing baby Nubbins. So much time that you kind of start to resent. I would complain of lower back pain. I was like, oh, God. So us nurses, we invented a game. And the object of the game was, was to try to get another girl to break character by doing something horrible to baby Nubbins. So, like, I would open all the drawers and rock Nubbins, head into the jagged edges while, like, humming a lullaby. Or the best would be, like, there'd be a whole group of people there, and you really have to. You scoop up the baby, and you really make it look like it's real. Burp it. And then at just the right moment, you drop the baby. Everyone knows it's not real, but they still are, like, gasp. So, I mean, we would just spend all day doing horrible things to Nubbins. And then one day, it was right after Thanksgiving, everything changed. Do you guys know that there's that show Rich Girls? It was, like, the first stupid reality show about rich children. Tommy Hilfiger's daughter was in it. But they came to FAO Schwartz, and they adopted a baby. And the day after it aired, suddenly these were, like, the hot items to get for Christmas. And every mother on the Upper east side had to have one for her child. And there was a line outside on the street of people waiting to adopt. And, you know, no more horse play, no more pranks. It was like, you know, adoptions left and right. And within one week, we sold out of all of the white babies. And it was three weeks until Christmas. The babies were already on backorder, so there was no way to get any more white babies. All we had left were incubator upon incubator of minority babies. So every day, the same scenario would repeat itself. These mothers, you know, eager to get the hot toy of the year, would rush up to the adoption center, and you just watch. They would stop dead in their tracks, and their heads go from incubator to incubator. They'd, like, pause briefly at the Asian baby, like, oh, never mind. To incubator. And then they would look at us, trying their best to be politically correct. They would be like, I'm sorry, do you have any other shades of babies? Well, the toy manager had, like, prepped us with a response. He taped a memo in the women's locker room that said, if the mothers express a disinterest with the babies due to their ethnicity, kindly inform them that while this is all the selection we have available, there's a wider selection available online. They can order online. Well, this isn't what these women wanted to hear. They would go on and on. They'd be like, oh, don't you have Something like, my little Susan here. Just something that looks like Susan. And so this happened so much that we, you know, we invented another game. And the game was this. Like, if the little girl didn't care, but it was clear the mother did, we would put the mother on the spot by. You know, we'd scoop up a baby and be like, oh, little Maria has really taken to you, and hand it to the. You would make an excellent mommy for Maria. And you just see these mothers in the background, like, why are you doing this to me? What did I ever do to you? And the second game we invented involved Brad's memo. Instead of saying a wider selection, we'd have to say whiter selection without getting caught or breaking character. But those are the things you do just to survive a job. Because literally every day, these things I didn't expect would happen. And I remember once in particular, this woman, I tried to sell her a Hispanic baby, and she put her hand on mine and was like, we don't want a dark child. You know what I mean? I was like, no, I don't. But also, unbeknownst to her, I'm actually half Mexican. I just look white. And my brothers, there's five kids. Three are dark, two of us are white. So I don't know what she means, but also, I don't know what she means. Does she honestly think that if someone saw her carrying a Hispanic baby, they would be like, oh, Juan the gardener knocked that kid up. But this is only half the story, because while we had sold out of all the white babies, we still had Nubbins, who was white with red hair and these green eyes. So if we weren't working with a customer, we still had to be holding, rocking, and bouncing Nubbins. So almost every day, some woman would rush up to the adoption center, see Nubbins in our arms, and think, in their mind, they're like, that's the last white baby. So they would say, can I see that baby? All you ever had to do was turn Nubbins around, and his head would, like, flop back, and the flippers would flip up, and they would just say, never mind. And this, you know, this happens so often that us nurses, we decided to make a bet. And the bet was, who do you think's gonna sell first? The minority babies or Nubbins? And I was like, oh, the minority babies, for sure. Who would buy Nubbins? And then. So, okay, to be honest, there are two ways to end this story. There's the politically correct way or there's the do you guys want to hear the real what really happened?
