Once more, our family decided to accept another new job offer; this time in Arizona. It would be a another big move for us and out of our native state, but we again were up for some adventure.

The week before Christmas in 1977, we went to AZ to see what it looked like and what they had to offer in the way of housing. The Valley of the Sun, in my opinion, looked like the backside of the moon, but we thought it would be okay to try it “for a couple of years.” This was when the term “famous last words” was coined.

When we randomly walked into a real estate office in Scottsdale, the woman on duty was named Jeanine. She was bubbly and enthusiastic. She was, after all, at work the week before Christmas. She knew we were serious buyers, and we knew she was a serious agent. Nobody gets anything serious done during the holidays.

She got a feel for what we were looking for and soon led us to a development her company represented. We didn’t tell her right away that we wanted one of those semi-custom homes on an acre lot. We thought we should go home to think about it.

But we were excited. Nowhere in CA could you find a deal like that. We sold our smaller house on a tiny lot for almost the same price we paid for this larger house on a very large lot.

I liked Jeanine a lot. We went out to dinner together a few times, and she invited us to her wedding. I realize that she got a nice commission for her sale to us, but I believe she was sincere in her friendship.

I thought about getting into real estate sales. It seemed exciting (it wasn’t), and everyone told me I had a way with people (I don’t).

I signed up for the real estate licensing classes. Now that I loved. Give me a new subject to study, and I’ll go for it like gangbusters. Putting it into practice was an altogether different deal. Getting a real estate license has NOTHING to do with selling real estate.

I put my license at a large company in Scottsdale—the same one as Jeanine’s. The manager was happy to accept my license, but that was IT.

There was a pecking order, in which order I was at the very bottom.

I gave it my all, however. I ’farmed” a neighborhood I liked with another young woman in the office. We put in our time. I sat at open houses on Sundays. Now, I think I would probably enjoy it, but then I hated it. People came through, and I was supposed to get everyone’s name, phone number and address. Of course, no one wanted to do that because they knew we would just be calling and hounding them from then on.

Once, they stuck me at a new housing development, by myself, with no real information about the houses. I figured I could just be friendly and tell anybody who came through that I could absolutely find out any information they needed.

A lone man came by the development that very first day I was there. He asked me one million questions. I answered as much as I could with the little information I had, but I assured him I would do all I could to answer all his answers.

When he left, I intuitively knew that he was the builder and was just testing me.

I told my manager. He said, “Don’t be ridiculous. He wouldn’t do that.”

The following Tuesday, at our morning meeting with all agents present, he said, “Yes, Jeanie that was Ray Junkert, and he called me and yelled at me for not having someone there who knew all about the options for his homes.” I was SO humiliated and near tears, but that was just the beginning of my real estate humiliation. It was a cold business — in that office anyway.

I finally got a listing! I happened to be on the desk when a man called in. He seemed like a likable guy, and I arranged to meet him at his place in Scottsdale in a lovely area. He had a nice piece of property with horse stables — all well-kept.

The only problem was that he wanted to list his property for $300,000, and it was worth about $100,000. I pleaded with him, but he said that was a firm price. My manager said, “That’s ridiculous, but if that’s what he wants, that what he gets.”

When another agent from another office would call me to ask about the property, they would laugh me off the phone when I told them how much.

Later, I found out he had been charged with child molestation and spousal abuse. He was likable, however, as I said. Just a likable, child molesting abusive kind of guy.

My second client had velvet business cards with gold print. That should tell you the whole story. He was loud and pompous and wanted me to find him a home — for him and his girlfriend — a big, blowzy blonde with enormous, plastic…shoes.

They were straight out of central casting for obnoxious boobs. He called himself an “entreprenuer,” and my instructions were to find a house for which he wouldn’t need a down payment or qualification. He was a millionaire, so he said, but it was “all on paper.” I think maybe toilet paper.

My third client was a minister and seemed closer to normal than anyone else I had dealt with so far. My boss said to get one of the more experienced agents to help me if it ever came to something, and so it was that I escorted him and his wife around town to a dozen or so listings one Tuesday morning.

Earlier that morning, I put on my pantyhose, but they were an old, cheap pair and pretty stretched out. Those hose kept working their way down to my knees. I had a brilliant idea —imagine a lightbulb right here—I would put my underwear on over the pantyhose to help hold them up. (I sure hope this wasn’t a spoiler alert.)

I got back to the office and bid adieu to the minister and his wife (oh, don’t worry, I’ll come back to that sneaky bastard) and thought we’d had a good morning.

If you recall, Tuesdays were our morning to see all the new listings and the day of our office meeting, when we all had to be there.

I was standing in back of our receptionist’s, Cindy’s, desk, and there were about a dozen other agents standing in front of her desk.

I don’t recall what we were chatting about, but I suddenly felt my underwear fly to my ankles! I was a quick thinker in those days. I hooked the panties on the toe of my shoe, scooped them up and dumped them in the receptionist’s trash can, creeping pantyhose be damned! I was so concerned about the pantyhose that I had forgotten to check the elastic in the panties (hate that word).

The look on Cindy’s face became frozen there for a few seconds. She and I were mercifully the only ones who had seen what happened, and I managed to carry on a conversation with the people on the other side of the desk for a few seconds before making my getaway. God only knows what I might have said. A big fog was starting to billow in my brain.

I managed to leave the office with my pantyhose intact, if not my dignity, and the underwear in Cindy’s trash. I had to get busy cooking up a plan to cover up, so to speak, what had just happened.

My husband was out of town, so alone, I hatched up some simple ideas. I could commit suicide, but that seemed extreme. I could move out of the state, tomorrow, — I’d leave a forwarding address with someone to tell my husband and children where I had gone; I could pay Cindy the receptionist a lot of money to keep it between the two of us. Unlikely.

I picked up my husband at the airport that night. He was not very helpful with ideas — after he stopped laughing. He finally came up with : “I don’t know what the hell to tell you to do, but we can’t afford to move.” Didn’t even seem concerned about the suicide idea.

I went with the last idea — pay Cindy. The next morning I went back in the office to face her and my humiliation. I walked through the door; Cindy and I looked at each other and burst into hysterical laughing, which then turned into crying. We were literally on the floor.

We couldn’t stop laughing long enough to tell anyone what was wrong, and anyway I wouldn’t have done so or allowed Cindy to do so.

When we picked ourselves up, we made a pact. Cindy didn’t make me pay her, and she promised to not tell anyone what had happened, but oh boy, did she want to.

I was grateful for one major thing: The minister and his wife weren’t witnesses to my “accident,” which was a miracle considering how long I had been out with them that morning.

And as for that minister and the agent who was going to help me?

I found out after I left my career in the real estate business that the minister did buy a house that I had shown him, and that agent who was helping me? He took the whole commission (he was my neighbor, too), and neither one ever mentioned anything to me about it.

I left the business soon after, and remember my realtor friend, Jeanine, who sold us our house? She checked the records for sales, and she was the one who told me about the sale. I wrote my neighbor a letter, and he gave me $100. If I’d had any guts, I would have ripped up the check and shoved it up his… mailbox, but, of course, I didn’t.

I’ve had many embarrassing moments since then, too, but that was the topper, and you can bet that the elastic in my underwear is sufficiently tight these days.

The End.