Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Torture Time

I did not go anywhere yesterday. I stayed home, wore an old ratty T-shirt, no make-up, hair slightly pulled back and sliding from its holder, and did some painting. I finished a book that I was reading. When Toby and Jesse came home, they put on their grubbies. Toby worked in the garden while I cooked fajitas on the grill. It was a pretty lazy day. Then the water-treatment salesman came by.

We are about to start a big addition onto our little house. You can see the photos of Toby and the jackhammer over at Jesse’s blog. Yesterday while he was running the jackhammer, the air conditioner man came by to talk to Toby about some specifics of putting in a unit and how we needed to prepare/build for it. The man stayed pretty much outside other than to look inside and say that "yeah, I can do that…" The whole visit lasted maybe five minutes.

So while I was cooking dinner last night – just setting it on the table actually – the water softener salesman calls. He said he was almost to our house. I yelled out the door to Toby, "Hey, there is a man coming by about the water!" thinking that the man would not need to come in. I was wrong. The man came inside with a little suitcase and proceeded to put it on the table. Jesse and I were pushing the food and plates out of the way to make room for him. Then he went into his dog and pony show testing our water, showing how hard it was, showing how soft water would look after it had been through his water treatment, etc. For close to an hour, he rattled on about his product in typical salesman mode (had a Yankee accent). There we sat looking like, well, like a bunch of Okies. On the table along with his salesman’s suitcase was a big plate of meat and our plates. Pushed to one end of the table was my art stuff, today’s mail, a watermelon, and Jesse’s bills which she happened to be paying when the guy came in. It was not comfortable. Only the dog was excited to see the salesman.

We must have looked like Ned with his first grade reader, or do all salesmen seem to be talking down to you? Toby went into "tease/torture mode." This is hard to explain to someone who has not personally witnessed it. Toby is normally a very quiet person. Maybe because he has a slow West Texas accent, people assume he is slow. Toby is a first rate smart a$$, and sometimes it comes out in a big way. He had a smart comment to everything the salesman said. Most of it was funny in an odd way – like when the salesman said, "Do any of you have any sodium restrictions or high blood pressure?" Toby answered, "Only the dog does." When the man held up two little jars containing our water from the tap and tap water that had been through his softener along with some yellow dye to show the particles, Toby said, "Are you sure you did not get that from the toilet?" It went on and on. Jesse and I could not help laughing from time to time- sometimes just rolling our eyes. I have to say that the salesman was a great sport with a good sense of humor. I think he liked Toby – for the most part.

After it was all said and done, the man was gone, and dinner served, I wanted to kill Toby for inviting the man here without telling me and then for torturing him throughout his spill. Yet the man did seem to think we were hicks (we looked the part) and maybe deserved what he got.

6 comments:

Buck said...

Ah... Speaking of salesmen... I used to know someone who would invite Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, and/or Seventh Day Adventists (or any other sort of door-to-door proselytizers) in to the house just so she could push their buttons. I would generally leave the room -- the results were never pretty for the visiting team, in that it's hard to argue theology with someone who has 12 years of Jesuit education... including four years of university.

That said... I'm surprised you delayed dinner for that guy. I'm thinkin' I wouldn't have been so kind/polite. :D

The Friendly Neighborhood Piper said...

You hit it cleanly on the head and drove it home in that one fateful blow when you said "dog and pony show". Those guys have been at our table too, making our dinner get cold, and apparently "No" doesn't register on their radar. i now have a F-R-E-E reverse osmosis system in my kitchen (via the Elder Statesman and Grammy) which is considerably less than the $3Grrrr they wanted me to spend to put RO water throughout the entire house.

Junk Diva said...

So did you buy his system?

When we lived at the farm and traveled back and forth every weekend we somtimes traveled late of and evening after it was to dark to work outside. On one of those evenings we had been hard at it at the farm all day. We were all dirty even the kids. We loaded up that way and started south. We got pulled over in Rush Springs, Randy got out of the truck in his dirty overall and no shirt, the cop shines his light in the truck, 3 dirty kids and a dirty barefoot me. I just knew he thought we were a bunch of hicks. Oh well, if the shoe fits.

Dave (aka Buckskins Rule) said...

I think there is some value in letting yourself appear to be less intelligent than you really are. The arrogant types will expose themselves, and you will always have the upper hand.

Jo Castillo said...

Too funny. When we bought our house in Lubbock it had the Culligan osmosis thing under the sink. Made the water great, but they hadn't connected it to the icemaker, so you had great water and bad ice. Okies in Lubbock.... Ha. Gene fixed that right away, don't you know?

Glad you have been painting so much. Like the dancers and can't wait to see the clouds finished.

Bag Blog said...

Buck,
Most religion pushers who come to your door are not well versed in their doctrine - pretty easy targets for someone like TSMP.

Piper,
Toby had actually called this man and invited him to the house, but I thought he was going to be more like the air conditioner man and just give us some pointers on preparing a place for a system. We are not going to have an RO system.

Buckskin,
Toby uses the "less intelligent" thing to his advantage often. He is a very quiet man who lets people wonder about his intelligence.

Jo,
We are headed to Lubbock this weekend. Toby's mom brings in good drinking water, but I avoid the ice.

I worked on the clouds some more, but they still need lots more work.