The Summer I Almost Sold My Soul

The humidity hit me like a wall when I stepped off the bus in Miami. July. Palm trees swaying like they didn't have a care in the world, while I was sweating through my vintage band tee and wondering why I'd agreed to spend my summer working for my uncle's "business opportunity."

"Trust me, kid," my uncle had said, "this pyramid structure is just how we organize the team. It's not a pyramid scheme. It's multi-level marketing." Which is exactly what a pyramid scheme would say.

I was supposed to sell cable packages door-to-door. Cable. In 2024. When everyone was streaming everything. The first day, I walked twelve blocks and got exactly zero sign-ups. But I did get offered churros by a grandma who spoke no English and got chased by three chihuahuas.

"You're going about it all wrong," said Maya, the girl whose family ran the convenience store below my uncle's office. She had this effortless cool thing going on — curls always slightly messy, always reading something with a cracked spine, never trying too hard. The kind of girl I'd spent the whole school year being low-key obsessed with from three rows behind her in AP Lit.

"How should I go about it?" I asked, trying to sound casual and not like I'd mentally memorized her Instagram captions.

She looked up from her book. "Stop selling cable. Start selling connection. That's what people actually want."

So I pivoted. Instead of pitching internet packages, I started actually talking to people. The lonely widow who just wanted someone to listen to her stories about her cat. The frustrated dad trying to set up WiFi for his kid's birthday party. The group of college students who somehow didn't know they could split streaming services.

By week three, I'd accidentally built this whole network. People would text me when they had connection issues, and I'd come over and fix it. Sometimes they'd pay me. Sometimes they'd feed me. One guy taught me to surf at dawn.

The summer humidity broke eventually. I never did hit my sales targets. My uncle stopped responding to my texts about commission. But I'd somehow become the unofficial tech support for three neighborhoods, made friends with people I'd never have talked to in high school, and learned that the real pyramid scheme wasn't the MLM structure — it was the whole idea that we had to climb over each other to get somewhere.

Some connections don't need a cable. They just need you to show up. Also, I learned that palm trees are basically just nature's way of saying "I'm trying my best but I'm kind of messy." Which felt pretty accurate to my entire summer experience.