Tag Archives: pitch

Dealership

Dealership: (n) a sales agency or distributor

I was a full-grown man, but when our family car blew up, I was feeling a great need to do something powerful. I needed to restore my position of respect with my children.

I had three thousand dollars. It was enough to buy another car if I had shopped well and hadn’t been in a huge hurry to convey a message to my offspring that I was in control.

I wasn’t in control.

I was still reeling a bit from my all-time favorite car giving up—and also way to eager to replace it without missing a beat.

I located the place in our town where car dealerships congregated to practice their “religion on wheels.” Driving among them, I immediately saw a Grand Marquis that was just stunning.

So I stopped in and talked to Bob. I don’t know whether his name actually was Bob, but it seemed reassuring displayed on his nametag. Bob told me the Grand Marquis was thirty-five hundred dollars.

My two oldest sons were with me on the trip.

They still thought I hung the moon after God displayed the stars.

I wanted to appear omnipotent. I needed to negotiate Bob down to the mat and pin him with a price of my choosing instead of his.

So I told Bob all I had was twenty-nine hundred dollars. He rolled his eyes. He said it was “impossible.” He even walked away to talk to a boss to see if something could be done.

In the process of all this negotiating, I actually cracked through Bob’s sales pitch to a real person. I didn’t know it. I thought I was dominating and was gradually getting what I wanted.

When he finally and reluctantly agreed to sell me the car for twenty-nine hundred flat and we were in the last stages of the paperwork, Bob looked up at me and smiled.

I don’t know why. Maybe it was seeing a father with his sons, or maybe he was tired of overstating the quality of the vehicles he sold just to make a buck.

Then he did something I believe he probably had never done before.

He tried to talk me out of it.

Not aggressively. He just said, “Now, you do know the odometer reads 162,000 miles. Right?”

I was drunk on my own cleverness. I just nodded my head.

Now, Bob wasn’t a saint. He wasn’t going to push it further. He wasn’t going to be totally forthcoming. Matter of fact, it probably gave him an aching pain in the head to offer the odometer number.

But I was determined.

My sons were smiling at me. They thought the car was cool. So I drove it off the lot, pridefully believing I had struck the best deal of my life.

We had immediate problems with it.

I called Bob back. He had forgotten how wonderful our interaction had been and was back to being “Bob the Car Dealer” at his dealership.

I took the car in to have it checked out and found out the vehicle had been in a flood, and therefore the electrical system was contorted, and the engine had water in the oil.

I drove that car for exactly three months. It was a classic case of being beautiful on the outside and ugly on the inside.

One night, coming home on the freeway, it caught fire and burned up a goodly portion of the engine.

My complete stupidity and arrogance had played out.

But I always gave Bob from the dealership, grace points because some creeping spider of conscience forced him to offer a kind, but unheeded, warning.

Cosigner

Cosigner: (n) a joint signer of a promissory note.

The definition of greatness, and perhaps even the best description of faith, is possessing a vision greater than your substance.

Very few of us arrive on Earth with enough substance to match our vision.funny wisdom on words that begin with a C

I found this to be true in my early years of adulthood. I knew what I wanted to do. I wasn’t sure how to do it, so I was very susceptible to the lame-brain plans of others—or even of my own making—which might be shortcuts for achieving my goals.

All of these ideas that were hatched in front of me and inside me always entailed the need for money. It was the idea that money needed to come before I could do the work.

Whenever someone suggested that I could do the work without needing money, I rejected it because it extended my waiting period and therefore discouraged my faithfulness.

I cannot tell you how many times I went to family, friends or even strangers, asking them to cosign on a loan, a car, a motor home, or even sound equipment, because I was convinced that my need for the substance was inhibiting my faith.

Most of the time, very wise people said, “Absolutely not.”

I did not like them. I thought they were selfish, unfeeling, perhaps anti-Christ.

On three occasions, when people gave into my “pitch” and signed on a piece of paper for money or goods on my behalf, they were left holding the bag—which I believe contained turds.

Later on in my life, when I got substance, I came back and reimbursed these people. But at the time, I am sure they felt very used—and their faith was damaged because I stole their substance.

Family and friends come to me sometimes, asking me to cosign a loan or a contract. I just pull out my wallet, peer into it, and figure out which President, with his face on the paper money, I can impeach from my ownership and give to them. If I can’t afford to give it, I don’t offer it.

Cosigning always seems like a great idea—sometimes even to two people. But if you really believe that substance is needed more than faith, your lack of faith will make it impossible to please either God or Earth.


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Chromatic

Chromatic: (adj) a musical scale including all existing pitches

I have sung for decades.

This doesn’t mean I’m a good singer–and I’m not trying to be humble. Singing is similar to chasing a butterfly–because you may be able to
see what you want to capture, but it can quickly flit away.

Sometimes your voice is not in good shape. Humidity can affect it–and stubbornly insisting you are on pitch is the best way to be out of tune.

So one of the best exercises for singing is practicing the chromatic scales up and down. Moving your voice only a half-step teaches you precision–and exposes those occasions when you might find yourself rubbing up against the correct tone but not actually owning it.

Now, if you’ve never sung, this may not mean anything to you. If you’re a singer, some of this may not mean anything to you.

But the reason I continue to sing is because it’s a wonderfully humbling chamber for the human ego, because there are three obvious realizations:

1. You’re at the mercy of your voice

2. There is no excuse for bad tone or bad pitch

3. There is always someone who will sing better than you.

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Arduous

dictionary with letter A

Arduous: (adj) involving or requiring strenuous effort.

Are you ready?

I’m gonna pitch you a movie idea.

Fade in:

Man wakes up in the morning, discovers he doesn’t have a razor to shave his beard. Rather than complain to his wife or go out into the world unshorn, he gingerly reaches into the shower, removing his wife’s Lady Bic, peering around the room cautiously to make sure he’s not observed.

He slathers his face with shaving cream and carefully runs the precious object across his face, freeing himself of jungle fuzz. He rinses the borrowed object with great intensity, placing it back into the shower, smiling into the mirror as he splashes his face with his favorite cologne, turning and heading out the door with a smile.

What do you think? Are you ready to invest?

Of course not.

No one would make this movie, because it is a tale of a human being finding a way to work things out without becoming exasperated, frenzied or completely debilitated by circumstance.

Somewhere along the line we’ve convinced ourselves that if our lives are not filled with arduous tasks, then we’re really not grown-up and we haven’t proven our mettle. With that desire to appear mature, we’ve taken things that should be simple and made them as painful as possible, whether politics, business, family life or religion. The more hot coals we can walk over, the more we are convinced of achievement.

If there is a line being formed by those who are looking for less arduous ways to approach life, I would like to get into it.

I’m never proud of myself when I become exasperated. I don’t feel manly swearing at traffic or frustrated because my hammer decided to hit my thumb instead of the nail. Cursing doesn’t strike me as a sign of strength, but rather, evidence of the little child that failed to die sometime after puberty.

There may be arduous tasks. Most of them are not what we perceive them to be.

The greatest gift you can give to yourself, or anyone else, is having a mechanism in your soul which sucks up problems that seem insurmountable … and spits out simplicity.

 

 

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Aaron

by J. R. Practix

dictionary with letter A

1. Aaron: (in the Bible) brother of Moses and the traditional founder of the Jewish priesthood

2. Aaron: Hank (1934- ) U.S. baseball player, full name Henry Louis Aaron. He set the all-time career record for home runs (755) and runs batted in (2,297). Baseball Hall of Fame (1982)

What do these two guys have in common?

People don’t have to have things in common. It’s kind of fun if they do, though.

My understanding is that Aaron from the Bible had a really long beard. Hank Aaron didn’t. A beard might get in the way of hitting home runs.

Speaking of that, maybe there’s a tie-in. Hank hit home runs and Aaron from the Bible was always dealing with people who wanted to run home to Egypt. Matter of fact, Aaron was so weak that he built a Golden Calf for people to worship. That’s when his brother, Moses, came down, took the Ten Commandments and tried to knock the Golden Calf out of the park.

You see? Another connection to baseball.

Must have been tough to be Aaron–the Bible one. Because his brother stuttered or had some sort of speech impediment, he was selected to do all the talking in front of the Pharoah. That had to be tough. Moses whispered in his ear and told him a plague of frogs was going to be sent to the Egyptian people, but HE was stuck with saying it out loud. Tough room, huh?

Hank Aaron had the most home runs for a career. That’s pretty impressive. That’s no flash in the pan. That’s not like hitting seventy in one year. That’s like doing it year after year. So maybe the similarity between these two guys is how different they were.

Bible Aaron did fine when things were great and the pitches thrown his way came right across the plate. Hank, on the other hand, hit ’em out of the stadium regularly, no matter who was pitching.

I guess what we can learn from this is … absolutely nothing, which is often the end result of object lessons. A teacher will work very hard to make a point, which totally escapes the grasp of the student. The teacher becomes more emphatic and the student pretends to understand–to escape getting in trouble.

Peaceful co-confusion.