Harvey Lee Whitmire: Door to Door

You know, you don't hardly see door to door salesmen any more, but we had one to come by Saturday. He was selling encyclopedias. I, myself, use the ones down at the library. Most people just look stuff up on the interweb, so it made me wonder a little why the guy was selling these books and how he could talk anybody into spending good money on a product that was probably out of date before it actually arrived at your door. The first thing I notice about this guy, a man who appeared to be in his mid-thirties, was how he was dressed. He looked like he had stepped out of the 1950's. He sported a crewcut hair style and wore horn rimmed glasses. The next thing I noticed was he had been taught a canned speech because when I asked him a question about something he had already told me, he was forced back to that point in his routine and spoke verbatim words. This poor guy was trying too hard to impress me. Me. I mean I don't figure I'm the kinda guy that anyone would feel inclined to impress, but this fellow seemed to feel the need to do just that. It just so happened that Hollis had left a book here earlier that morning and Dorothy had set it on the hall table to make sure he would find it when he came back by. It was a book by that German, Nietzsche, you know the one who said, "God is dead." The poor bookseller saw the title and proclaimed, "Oh, Nye Check. I've always wanted to read him." I said, "I reckon you heard about him dying and all." "No!" said Mr. Encyclopedia. "When?" "Not sure," said I. "Last week sometime I reckon."
Later I felt a little bad about teasing this poor fellow. He has enough to deal with without a smarty pants like me funning around with him.