Although I don’t mark it, Buy Nothing Day has a special place in my heart. Buy Nothing Day is the day of the year when we are supposed to do just that âe” buy nothing, in an exercise of consumer awareness. The idea is great: we do need to be aware of what we buy, to support local business. It is better to buy carrots at a farmer’s market than to buy big agri-business carrots.

It was Buy Nothing Day on Friday and I didn’t do too well. I bought $87.63 in groceries, wine and a lottery ticket.

Ten years ago, on the first Buy Nothing Day, I did much better. I had what seems now like another life, as a two-bit restaurateur in Hubbards, on the South Shore, running a hip café and bakery called Debbie’s Dinette. I wanted to support that first Buy Nothing Day; since I ran a business what was I to do? Close for the day? Too easy. I decided I would not accept money. Everyone would be forced to barter.

The day was bedlam. People came from far and wide to trade trash and treasure for meat loaf and loaves of bread. Folks who stumbled in unawares were confused to find their money was no good.

The media coverage was huge. The newspapers sent people down. The television stations sent cameras. On CBC radio’s Maritime Noon call-in question was “What would you barter for a club sandwich?”

By the end of the day, the café looked like Christmas on The Waltons. There were mountains of stuff everywhere. The story got bigger: I went national, on As It Happens and Midday. And then Dini Petty’s people called. I was asked to appear on her talk show with some of the items I’d received in exchange for food.

The night before I was flown to Toronto, I had my hair cut by a café customer. She laid one of those small black combs you used to buy at diners and gas stations flat on my head, and everything that stuck out beyond the comb she cut off. So my hair was more or less buzzed off. There were patches of scalp showing. I thought I was going to look like Ripley in the movie Aliens, but instead I looked like a ne’er-do-well sister of Charles Bronson.

I looked truly awful.

In Toronto, a car took me to the studio. Before the show, Dini Petty came into the green room and greeted her guests. She said hello to the Bare Naked Ladies (who liked me; I looked a lot like the lead singer). They all went out to have a photo taken for the wall of fame. Then she said hello to Gordon Pinsent (who didnâe(TM)t know who the Bare Naked Ladies was) and they went out for a photo. Then she found me, took one look and her jaw dropped. We did not go out for a photo.

My time on camera with her was torture. I got back on the plane and went back to Hubbards. The show was broadcast the next day. The café regulars wanted to see it, so I set up the television on a table and when it started, at the very first glimpse of myself I fled to the kitchen and did not watch.

To this day I’ve never seen it.