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<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
School roared back into session just a few weeks ago, and like night follows day, it\u2019s already here.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s FUNDRAISING SEASON!<\/p>\n
And thus arrived my first opportunity to serve as the sales target of an earnest and highly focused six-year-old.<\/p>\n
It began this way:\u00a0 As I walked into the room, I observed him turning to his mother for consent.\u00a0 \u201cIt\u2019s OK,\u201d my daughter affirmed.\u00a0 \u201cYou can ask her.\u201d He wasted no time before launching his pitch, and no words on frilly preliminaries.\u00a0 Presenting himself immediately in my path, he began, \u201cEvie, would you like to buy a City Saver book today?\u201d<\/p>\n
Well, I don\u2019t know, Buddy, I replied, stalling for time while dropping into a chair to get to eye level.\u00a0 What\u2019s this about?<\/p>\n
He came forward with his sample and presented his order form.\u00a0 \u201cIt\u2019s for my school.\u00a0 If you buy this book, you can save money, and the money goes to my school.\u201d\u00a0 The flow of funds was slightly distorted in this preamble, but I got the gist.\u00a0 \u201cYou put your name right here,\u201d he rolled on, pushing to close, like any good salesman.\u00a0 \u201cJust write it there, and I\u2019ll put your money in the envelope.\u201d<\/p>\n
I\u2019d be happy to support your school, Buddy, I replied, but I don\u2019t have any cash on me, and I\u2019d rather pay with cash.\u00a0 Could we do this some time in the next few days?\u00a0 A small , serious nod followed, along with confirmation that a week or so remained before the deadline.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not entirely clear whether superior follow-up was part of the sales training foisted on these pint-sized revenue generators, or just a natural part of Buddy\u2019s tenacious nature, but every encounter over the next couple of days began with exactly the same polite reminder.\u00a0 \u201cEvie,\u201d he began again, calmly, \u201cwould you like to buy a City Saver book today?\u201d\u00a0 Finally, I remembered to get cash from the ATM, and we sat down to close the transaction.\u00a0 I entered my name as instructed, handed over a twenty and a five, and watched while he ogled these bills of such scope to a small boy.\u00a0 Watching him stare, a memory came flooding back, and I wondered if there might be something more that I could offer him.<\/p>\n
Back in the 1960s, small towns like ours in central Kentucky still had those magical, dusty emporiums known as \u201cdime stores.\u201d\u00a0 Our little town had two on Main Street, one named for history\u2019s ultimate master of frugality, Ben Franklin.\u00a0 A visit to Ben Franklin was a chance to spend your allowance coins on penny candy, or select a birthday card and a matchbox car for the little brother who loved them, or just accompany a parent in search of laundry soap, a replacement frying pan, or some other essential item.<\/p>\n
One spring afternoon when I was about seven, I joined my dad on a visit to Ben Franklin that occupied him long enough for me to wander off and browse the toy section. \u00a0I stopped to stare at an old-style push carriage for a baby doll, an alluring pink plaid with shiny silver wheels, perched on a high shelf, literally and figuratively out of reach.\u00a0 I had gotten a new doll the previous Christmas, and how I wanted to push her in this charming little conveyance.\u00a0 It had a handwritten price card perched in front of it that my mind\u2019s eye can still see to this day:\u00a0 $2.99.\u00a0 It might have been $1 million.<\/p>\n
Except for an inspiration my father gave me.<\/p>\n
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“His gentle means of sculpting souls took me years to understand.” from Leader of the Band, by Dan Fogelberg<\/p><\/div>\n
Locating me in the toy aisle, staring upward, Dad shooed me out the door and into the car.\u00a0 Maybe I was daydreaming on the way home, and through dinner, because I don\u2019t think I said much.\u00a0 Just before bedtime, he called me over to his easy chair, where he was finishing the newspaper.<\/p>\n
\u201cThinking about that doll buggy, hmmmm?\u201d\u00a0 he asked.\u00a0 I nodded.\u00a0 \u201cYou really want it, don\u2019t you?\u201d\u00a0 Another nod.\u00a0 \u201cOkay, sweetie, I\u2019ll tell you what, I\u2019ll make you a deal.\u00a0 You come up with the first $1.50, and I\u2019ll match what you save, and we\u2019ll get your doll that buggy.\u00a0 Think you can do that?\u201d<\/p>\n
And so the match of enterprise was lit.\u00a0 I can\u2019t remember how long it took me to raise my seed capital, but it was surely many weeks.\u00a0 I think my allowance in those days was 15 cents a week, or maybe a dime, but I asked for, and received, extra chores to earn additional cash.\u00a0 I folded laundry and ran it up the steps from the basement, did extra dishes and helped my mom in the garden, and slowly my little jar begin to fill with coins that I must have counted a thousand times.\u00a0 When finally I reached the mountaintop, he drove me back to Ben Franklin and carried through the lesson to the very last step, insisting that I shake my own coins out of the jar onto the counter so the saleslady could count them before he laid down his money.\u00a0 \u201cThat\u2019s her money, that she earned and saved,\u201d he told the lady, who nodded her approval at me primly.\u00a0 I pushed the buggy on the sidewalk out to the car, my heart bursting from the joy of accomplishment and the pure greed of acquisition.<\/p>\n
I think back on this episode now with such wonder at my father\u2019s insight. \u00a0He was a complicated and challenging man in so many ways, but strategy like this was his greatest strength and perhaps most enduring gift to his four children.\u00a0 It was not just the genius of teaching a seven-year-old to take charge of and work for her own desires in this world.\u00a0 Looking back through the smoky shadows of the decades, I remember how my heart was lifted by the simple solidarity, the shared goal, the joint effort implied by his offer.\u00a0 If it matters to you, he was saying, then it matters to me, too.\u00a0 I hear you, I care about what you care about, and I\u2019ll walk with you to get there.\u00a0 I won\u2019t carry your load for you, but I\u2019ll share it.\u00a0 That\u2019s the essence of what he said\u2014to such a little, little girl.\u00a0 He and I, we were in it together.<\/p>\n
Isn\u2019t that all we want in this life?<\/p>\n
And so, across my dining room table the other day, I finished completing my rows on the order form, handed Buddy the pen back and asked him some questions.\u00a0 How many books are you hoping to sell?\u00a0 He looked a bit uncertain.\u00a0 Do you have a sales goal?\u00a0 Still no answer, but I could tell he was pondering it.\u00a0 I tried a different tack.\u00a0 What happens if you sell them?\u00a0 This rang the right bell, and I got a litany of possible prize options for sales achieved. I asked if three would be a good goal, and he nodded that it would.<\/p>\n
Well, you did a good job selling me one, I said, so I\u2019ll make you an offer:\u00a0 if you sell another one, I\u2019ll sell a third one for you, and that will get you to three.\u00a0 But you have to sell the next one first, understand?\u00a0 I won\u2019t do my sale until you get your next one.<\/p>\n
He signified agreement with this, though I could see, deep in Buddy\u2019s highly analytical mind, he was wondering what was in it for me.\u00a0 Nevertheless, he persisted, nailing his next sale with his indulgent aunt, and it was time to uphold my end.\u00a0 I invested in the past in fundraisers for the children of a work friend, so I tapped her for a easy yes, and the deal was done. Buddy sold another book to his mom, turned in his money, and collected his prizes.<\/p>\n
Will he remember that I helped get him there?\u00a0 Who knows?\u00a0 I\u2019ll probably get another chance to work the Matching Grant idea again for some future endeavor.\u00a0 I bet it will work like a charm with his younger sister, who never saw an activity attempted by her brother that she wouldn\u2019t hurl herself at like a Major League fastball.<\/p>\n
As to what\u2019s in it for me, in addition to all those coupons?\u00a0 It\u2019s just a chance to pay forward a gift I was given a very long time ago, a chance to show, in real time, how a challenge is lightened when it is shared.\u00a0 And the chance to pass that on to this enterprising young fellow, so intent on everything he does, is a gift, in itself, to me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
School roared back into session just a few weeks ago, and like night follows day, it\u2019s already here. It\u2019s FUNDRAISING SEASON! And thus arrived my first opportunity to serve as the sales target of an earnest and highly focused six-year-old. It began this way:\u00a0 As I walked into the room, I observed him turning to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1813,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1065","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-grandkids"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1065","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1065"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1065\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1813"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}