Back when we’d lived on the farm, my parents had listened to Sly and the Family Stone, Fleetwood Mac, the Beach Boys — music unheard in our house any longer, unless I put it on the turntable myself. They’d once hosted parties where all their friends got drunk and said funny things and played volleyball barefoot while wearing their hats at goofy angles. They were young, and it was the Seventies, but now the Seventies were over. Reagan had proclaimed morning in America, and the parties had stopped. Hangovers were no longer cool in this new dawn. My parents had even parted with their copy of The Joy of Sex, my favorite book of the hundred or so we owned, half of them Louis L’Amour novels. I mostly blamed Amway for the loss of everything fun and attractive in their lives. Now it was all work and church and boring sitcoms on the boob tube after dinner. I’d overheard one of my skeptical relatives call Amway a cleverly designed pyramid scheme built on a foundation of Christian sanctimony. Those words gave me the courage I needed to take a stand. With money I made bagging groceries at the Red Owl, I became a brand fanatic. I bought Crest toothpaste and Tide detergent and did my laundry separately from the rest of the family’s, to avoid using Amway products. This pointless insurrection left my father baffled. If I needed some token way of asserting my individuality, he said, then fine. Go for it. Waste your money on Tide.