In this way, a child is stepped up to greater feats of imagination and faith as he or she matures. Beginning with Santa in infancy, and ending with the Tooth Fairy as the child acquires adult teeth. Or, plainly put, beginning with all the possibility of childhood, and ending with an absolute trust in the national currency.
Shot Dunyun: Talk about frustrating. All that pretense and reality in flux: Gold worth penny candy. Sugar worth gold. Macaroni passing as brains, and adults swearing the Tooth Fairy was real. Even the way a bizarre cultural delusion like Santa Claus can drive half of annual retail sales. Some mythological fat asswipe drives our national economy. It's beyond frustrating.
That night, even as a little boy, Rant Casey just wanted one thing to be real. Even if that real thing was stinking blood and guts.
From the Field Notes of Green Taylor Simms: Each holiday tradition acts as an exercise in cognitive development, a greater challenge for the child. Despite the fact most parents don't recognize this function, they still practice the exercise.
Rant also saw how resolving the illusions is crucial to how the child uses any new skills.
A child who is never coached with Santa Claus may never develop an ability to imagine. To him, nothing exists except the literal and tangible.
A child who is disillusioned abruptly, by his peers or siblings, being ridiculed for his faith and imagination, may choose never to believe in anything—tangible or intangible—again. To never trust or wonder.
But a child who relinquishes the illusions of Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy, that child may come away with the most important skill set. That child may recognize the strength of his own imagination and faith. He will embrace the ability to create his own reality. That child becomes his own authority. He determines the nature of his world. His own vision. And by doing so, by the power of his example, he determines the reality of the other two types: those who can't imagine, and those who can't trust.
Reverend Curtis Dean Fields: No matter how well you seal it, wax or varnish, a wood floor can hold an odor. Clear cedar, tongue-in-groove boards like the grange has, the end part of summer you can still smell what happened. Hot weather. Took only one child to vomit her cake—Dorris Tommy, I believe—and the stink set off so many others you couldn't never tell who was number two.
Danny Perry (Childhood Friend): Weren't nothing but blood and barf, like a sticky carpet covered the whole floor. Blood and barf. History is, that's how come folks started calling Buster Casey his nickname—"Rant." On account of every kid doubled over and making nearabouts the same sound. Kids yelled "Rant!" and up comes vanilla cake and frosting. Yelling "Rant!" and spouting out purple fruit punch.
Middleton folks, if they're sick or drunk, they'll still say, "I feel I'm going to Rant," if they're close to throwing up.
Bodie Carlyle: Before Rant moved to the city, he gived me twenty-four gallon milk jugs full to the neck with folks' lost teeth. From little baby teeth going back to grandfolks' mouths, dug out of trunks and keepsake boxes. By my account, the suitcases he hauled to the city, they held nothing but gold money.
Rant, he called those milk jugs "The Middleton Tooth Museum."
8–Pacing
Wallace Boyer (Car Salesman): Your truly effective car salesman, he hands you his business card, first thing. That salesman says hello, tells you his name, and gives you his card, because human behavior studies show that 99 percent of customers use the business card as their excuse to exit the dealership. Most car buyers, if they hate you, even hate your cars, they still feel bad for wasting your time. If they can ask for your card, the customer feels better about bailing out. You want to trap most shoppers, you hand them your card the minute you meet them: They can't escape.
In the first forty-three seconds you meet a stranger, experts in human behavior say that, just by looking at them, you decide their income, their age, their brains, and if you're going to respect them. So a smart salesman wears a decent suit. He doesn't scratch his scalp and then smell his fingernails.
A landmark study, out of Cal State LA in 1967 and proved a bunch of times since then, it says 55 percent of human communication is based on our body language, how we stand or lean or look each other in the eye. Another 38 percent of our communication comes through our tone of voice, the speed we talk, and how loud. The surprise is, only 7 percent of our message comes through our words.
So a smart salesman, his big talent is knowing how to listen.
We call it «pacing» a customer: You match your breathing rate to his breathing. He taps his foot or drums his fingers, you do, too, and match his speed. If he scratches his ear or stretches his neck, you wait twenty seconds and do the same. Listen for his words and watch where his eyes roll as he talks. The majority of customers, they learn through vision, and most times their eyes are looking up—to the left if they're remembering information, but they'll look to their right if they're lying. The next group learns by hearing, and they'll look side to side. The smallest group learns by moving or touching, and they'll look down as they talk.
The visual people will say, "Look," or "I see what you mean." They'll say, "I can't picture that," or "See you later." That's Echo Lawrence: always eyeing you.
Your audio customers will say, "Listen," or "That sounds good," or "Talk to you soon." For example, that Shot Dunyun guy: Makes almost no eye contact, but if you talk fast, sound excited, he'll get all worked up.
Your touch-based customers will tell you, "I can handle that." They'll say, "Got it," or "Catch you later." That's the young kid, Neddy Nelson: Stands too close to you, and he's always tapping you, touching you with his fingers, to make sure you'll listen.
In really effective pacing, a salesman adopts the learning style of the customer—visual or hearing or touch—to the point of looking up or sideways or down at the ground while you talk. Your goal is to establish common ground. Not everybody enjoys baseball or even fishing, but every person is obsessed with himself.
You are your own favorite hobby. You're an expert on you.
All a good salesman does is make eye contact, mimic your body language, nod or laugh or grunt to prove he's spell-bound—those noises or gestures, they're called "verbal attends." A salesman only has to prove that he's just as obsessed with you as you are with yourself. After that, the two of you share a common passion: you.
There's lots more comes after that: embedded commands, objection bridging, hot buttons, tie-down and add-on questions, control questions…you name it.
Any good salesman will tell you: Before a customer cares how much you know, that customer wants to know how much you care.
And your truly effective salesman, he knows how to fake that he really, truly does give a shit.
9–Fishing
Bodie Carlyle (Childhood Friend): Living, alive animal fur is what my fingers would finally come across. Rant just egging me to push my arm deeper into the ground. My fingers slippery with grease. Most of me sun red, stretched out on the sand, my hand's crawling down, colder than cool, into the dark of a varmint hole. Skunk, maybe. A coyote or gopher den.
Rant's eyes on my eyes, he says, "Feel anything?"
My hand blind, touching a tangle of sagebrush roots, smooth rocks, then—hmmm—fur. The soft hairs moving off, out of my reach down the tunnel.