Meeting Earl was an accident. My best friend and I had spent the afternoon wandering around the Downton Mall in Charlottesville and stumbled upon his store. We hadn’t intended to go in, it was the tea room above his shop that originally drew our attention. Yet somehow we ended up descending the cool concrete stairs into a cluttered shop filled with every kind of vintage knickknack, from dresses and jewelry to records, children’s toys and aftershave. The only customers there, we perused the store and found one quirky vintage dress that particularly reminded us of a friend.
“Somehow, she could pull it off.” I said.
My friend agreed. “Sarah can wear anything,” she groaned. “It’s so unfair. She could put on a burlap sack and still look great.”
“Because anything that Sarah chooses to wear always looks cute,” said a voice from behind the counter, “because that’s just who she is.”
We turned and saw Earl staring back at us, a large man in his fifties with a graying beard and ponytail lounging in his office chair behind the antique jewelry counter.
“You’re not wrong.” My friend laughed. “That’s exactly who Sarah is.”
He continued. “I have a million of those. You should hear my, ‘Oh my gosh, this is so you!’” And that was how we met Earl: collector, professional people watcher, dispenser of wisdom and innovator.
We moved on to examining a stack of antique briefcases, when someone else entered the store.
“Hey Earl!” he called. “Is it OK if I switch out this jacket? This one is a little tight, and the sleeves are longer on the other one.”
“No problem.” Earl answered, leaning back in his swivel chair. He saw us looking over his the suitcases.
“I have a really nice one over there,” he said, pointing to a bookshelf where a gleaming leather case sat. We exclaimed over it until the $60 price tag effectively killed our love for it.
“Yeah, I don’t have that much money, unfortunately,” my friend lamented
He motioned towards me with a smirk. “That’s what friends are for.”
Earl was someone who inspired curiosity. I don’t know if it was his larger than life personality, the pony tail or the gleam in his eyes, but it felt like he had a story to tell.
“How did you get into this business?” I asked.
“Well, when you get to be my age, no one wants to hire you because they think you’re too old, and they want you to have a long resume with lots of experience. So I had to think, how can I make money on something I can do on my own? I started going to garage sales, collecting things and selling them online, and here we are now,” he said, broadly gesturing to the store.
Earl proceeded to tell us how he had worked a desk job for quite a few years before moving to Chicago, and opening a coffee shop.
“I had no business doing that,” he said. “I had no experience, no idea how to run it. It took me twice as long to figure out simple things because I had no one helping me. But I was innovative. I thought of new ideas that people who had been in the business for a long time didn’t think of. Sometimes you need someone with fresh ideas and no idea what they’re doing to shake things up. My coffee shop got starred reviews, and was listed as one of the top places visit in Chicago. It was great. I loved getting to do something new every day.” He stopped and looked at us. “Are you two in college?”
We told him we were.
“Now here’s some advice,” he said, lowering his voice. We unconsciously leaned in.
“Take a job that makes you learn something new every day, and don’t be afraid of getting it wrong. Failure means you’re learning and trying new things. The key is to not be afraid of trying something…” he paused. “Well, the key is to not be afraid.”
After our conversation ended, we only spent a few more minutes in the store, before climbing the stairs back to street level. We walked in silence for a bit. I was thinking about perfectionism, my fear of failure and my ideas of what I want my life to look like. “The key is to not be afraid,” I told myself. And really, what is there for us to be afraid of? If the goal is to constantly try new things, and failure means we're learning, then what is stopping us?
