OK, I’ll ‘fess up. I was “took” by the Scottish boy this summer. We were peacefully enjoying a pleasant summer’s afternoon one day this week when a young college-age boy drove up to our house. We live way out in the country and seldom have spontaneous visitors, so we all dropped what we were doing to see what was up.
He said he was visiting the homeschooling families in our county and wanted our opinion on a “homeschooling manual” his employer had written. He showed us a list of other homeschooling families he had talked with, and could he come in and talk with us? Well, sure, we said. We’re always happy to give our opinion on anything having to do with homeschooling, and besides that, he had the most endearing Scottish accent you ever did hear.
We brought him into our living room and sat around him, all seven of us, listening to him talk. Thinking back, I really do believe he hypnotized us. We couldn’t take our eyes off him as he explained about this “manual,” which turned out to be a set of reference books, that he was selling. I don’t even know when it was I began to realize that he was selling something. All I know is that there was no way I could say “no” to the lad. I just melt when I hear a Scottish accent.
So, I turned to Harvey, thinking he would be strong and just say no. “Whatever you think, Laurie, is fine with me.” No help there. And then Nate said he would lend me the money if I didn’t have it. Well, that pretty much did it. We were gonners at that point, and the boy knew it. But, he never pressured us to buy. Never. In fact, he told us we shouldn’t buy the books. But I was bound and determined to buy them. No matter that I didn’t even really know what kind of books they were or that we couldn’t afford them.
Mark my words, that boy will be a millionaire before he is thirty.
I wrote the above story several years ago. The books sat on our bookshelf, unopened, all these years. But we have finally found a use for them — pressing flowers for the wedding.
More wedding plans tomorrow.
Last week we had a young man come over one evening… much like what you described. But this young man was a bit pushy from the get go. We were in the middle of some family-time activities and he asked to come in … it was about 8:00 at night. John asked: “What are you selling”…The young man replied:”reference books, can I come in now?”. No Scottish accent, just high pressure sales…he didn’t make it in the door.