William Boeckman:
CLASS OF 1964
Levittown Memorial High SchoolClass of 1964
Levittown, NY
Nassau Community CollegeClass of 1965
Garden city, NY
William's Story
The Old Soft Water Hard Sell
One day we’re just settin’ around the old hacienda. I know it’s unusual for us to be just settin’ around, but we had taken the day off from our normal busy schedule and just set around. Wouldn’t you know it--the phone rings. “Curses!!” I exclaimed, adding an extra exclamation point to really illustrate my point. “Now one of us will have to get up and answer it” I muttered as I rolled off the couch towards the ringing nuisance. As soon as I heard the sweet smelling voice of a young lady on the other end, I turned on the charm. She asked if I would like a free case of orange juice. I replied “What’s the juice wearing?” She gave me a puzzled look over the phone and said a water softener-system-hard-sell-salesman will be here first thing in the morning. I stammered “You sound cute and probably like me so it’s ok for a salesman to interfere with my life at the crack of dawn”. Then I went out and bought a rooster that gets up before noon so we wouldn‘t miss him. Turned out the salesman still got here before the rooster woke up. So we had roast rooster for dinner that night.
The hard-sell water-softener salesman’s name was David, obviously named after the biblical water softener salesman, David The Soft Seller. So David storms into the house with a smile on his face and a bottle of orange juice under his arm. I stopped him dead in his tracks and shouted in a gentle whisper “Where’s the case of OJ I was promised?”. He said “Shut up, sit down and listen to my spiel”. I sat down, started listening and said “Gulp”.
He starts off by saying “Call me Dave”. I started to say “Hi Dave”, but he cut he off in mid-sentence and started his sales pitch.
He came armed with a mini bar of Ivory soap and some contraption he claimed was a demo-size water softener. I forget what he did with the soap, but we got to keep the leftover piece. He then proceeded to show us how dirty our water was. He proved it was impossible to actually clean our clothes with “that” water. He pointed out that taking a shower in “that” water was like bathing in a cesspool. Thanks to Dave, we learned we had been literally drinking poison!! “Yikes!!!!” we screamed in unison. I shouted to my new friend Dave “Where sh...Expand for more
ould I sign? I need this water softener”. But Dave was cool. And cruel. He said “Normally we sell these things for about $5000 dollars, but for you, it’s only going to cost you $4000. Why? Because I like you”. Hey I’m no dummy so I jumped at this chance to get a bargain on something I really didn’t need. I actually dickered him down to $3950. Hope I didn’t get him in trouble with his company, them taking a loss and all.
Finally, after about 5 hours, he stopped his friendly banter and actually relinquished the case of orange juice. Being a “moderate” beer drinker, I know that a case consists of 24 units. Apparently, OJ comes in cases of 4! Yes I said 4! What a bummer! That’s less than a bottle an hour to hear my ex-friend David ramble on about his crappy, overpriced water softener. I thanked him for my time and kicked his butt out the door. He fell far short of the curb.
Next day who do think calls me? Dave? No way Jose. Not Jose either. It’s another water softener company. Turns out they can sell you a water softener much cheaper than Dave because they don’t have to pay Dave to sell it to you. They just follow him around and call you the next day with an offer too good to refuse. Then they throw in a lifetime’s supply of real crappy shampoo and industrial strength cleanser. I washed my hair once with the cleanser and went bald. After my hair grew back, I washed it with the shampoo. Went bald again. Hey, no hair’s better than dirty hair. This happened 3 years ago. I still have shampoo left. Where else can you buy a 10 gallon jug of shampoo? Well, actually, I did buy a very large jug-o-shampoo at BJ’s about 10 years ago. It’s almost empty now. Those large jugs last a long time. Great bargains!. You save even more when your hair falls out. No need for shampoo.
As it all turned out, we bought our overpriced water softener from the sleazy, but cheap company. Not only did Dave lose the sale, but he lost his job. So we adopted him. He sleeps in the garage next to the water softener. Sometimes late at night I can hear him purring and washing his hair with industrial strength cleanser. He’s so cute when he’s hairless. I wonder if there’s some kind of contest I can enter him in. He sure is unusual-looking.
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