Did you ever take time to really listen to what people say and “how” they say it? It does take time, something most people don’t ever seem to have enough of, but it can be very interesting. I first started learning to listen to what people say while working in my father’s general store. In my early teens, if I was helping a customer with farm supplies, some of the plumbing supplies and especially some of the electrical supplies, I tried to let the customer talk and listen to them and learn from them. That’s right, I was waiting on them, but I was learning from them because I didn’t know much yet about the details of those products. The hardware was fun and came easy to me, plus I had a good working knowledge of it without trying too hard. In time, I was pretty good with the farm supplies and plumbing-but not electrical! And that holds true to this day. Whether it was at work or home, if I had electrical issues I call the electrician. There was a phrase I remember my father repeatedly using and that was: “You can’t beat a guy at his own game.” All I know about the “game” of electricity is it can kill me, so “I call the man”.
One of the first things I remember hearing a regular customer in the store say and he said it every time he was asked the question “how are you doing?”. This man would always say “fair to midland”. Now, you have to understand that when I was seven or eight years old, hearing that all the time made no sense to me because I knew of no place named Midland and I had no idea what he was talking about.
We had a corner in the back of the store where we had a shoe department. Mostly all different kinds of work shoes and boots, but also some dress shoes and canvas sneaker type shoes as well. My father was helping a woman pick out a new pair of shoes and when he asked her what size she wore she said, “8 or 8:30”!
One day I was at the counter and a boy came in and said, “I need some gaukin.” I asked “what are you going to do with that?” He then said, “remember those two pieces of glass you cut for my dad? Well he thought he had a can of gaukin, but it was all hard and dry.” I thought, okay he needs glazing compound. Then there was a regular customer, very friendly and most days didn’t have to verbally “say” anything. He would come in, point out the front window and hold up two fingers-that meant two dollars of gas (almost four gallons then) and get two candy bars, then after paying, nod his head and give me a little “salute” as he left!
One woman used to call in her grocery order every week and then her daughter would pick it up on her way home from work. Like everyone, the items she ordered varied from week-to-week, except for one thing. She would always say, “I want seven greenish bananas-not yellow bananas, if you don’t have greenish, I don’t want any.” That was the one constant that would be in every grocery order for her. When I’m at the grocery store now, fifty years later, if I see greenish bananas you know who I’m fondly remembering!
There were also times when someone would be working on a project and send their kids to the store with a note and some money. One day a little girl came in with a list of a few hardware items and one of the things on the list (I never knew if her father was serious or joking), but it said “two pounds of left handed eight penny nails”. Well, I’m right handed and any nail I ever drove, I started by holding it with my left hand. So I weighed out two pounds of #eight nails and wrote “two pounds left handed eight penny nails” on the bag. Must have worked!
There were also some times that children would say what’s on their mind-without a filter! One day a woman had her little boy with her and was doing her weekly grocery shopping and she was slowly filling the counter with her items. While she was shopping, a farmer came in who had just come from cleaning out the left over silage and needed some repair parts. (If you’ve ever smelled silage-especially the old stuff…WOW!). As he was standing there at the counter, the woman with her boy came to put some more items on the counter, when all of a sudden her boy loudly yells “Mommy that man stinks!” She quickly hurried to the back of the store with her boy.
There have been times when people have been asked to say something very important, like when Jesus was talking with his disciples He said to them “But who do you say that I am? Simon Peter answered, You are the Christ the Son of the living God.” Matthew 16:15-16 (NASB)
So even though the majority of what most of us say is not really all that important, there IS coming a day when what we have said or will say is very important.
Till Next Time….
Leave a Reply