Win Friends and Influence People

Mom had a special knack for teaching without using undue drama. The following story illustrates her typical style.

Tom and I had been driving tractors and motorcycles for quite a while when we decided it was high time we had a real “classy ride”. Neither of us had a driver’s license yet, but that was no obstacle to our plan. My 16th birthday was coming up and I would be able to drive our car by myself soon enough. So we hatched a plan to go together and buy a car. We started looking at the ads in the newspaper and before long we found our dream car. It was a 1962 Ford Falcon, almost exactly like the picture below.

We told dad this was precisely what we wanted and asked him to take us to see the car. The three of us went to the house of the seller, who turned out to be an old gentleman with a heavy Swedish accent. He showed us the car and let us get inside and look under the hood and kick the tires. It was in very good shape, so Tom and I could hardly contain our excitement over buying this “classy ride”. The asking price was $350. We had the money between us and were ready to put our money on the table and call it a deal.

However, dad had other ideas. He asked the kindly old Swedish man if we could come inside and discuss the deal. Now I started to get nervous. In my mind, there was nothing to discuss. Just give the nice man his money and let’s be on our way. But my dad felt there is always some benefit in trying to sweeten the deal when you are buying a used car. The old man invited us in and I nervously hoped that dad wouldn’t destroy our dreams by trying to save a few dollars.

When we were seated in the living room, dad said, “Would you be willing to take $325 for the car?” The old man said, “I vill tink about it. Joost a moment.” He got up and left the room to discuss our offer with his wife. I was holding my breath and crossing my fingers when the old man returned and said, “Dat vill be alright, ya.” I sighed a big sigh of relief as we left with the understanding that dad would return with the cash the next day.

I could only drive the car with a parent present for a few months, but Tom and I were ecstatic that we were the owners of a car. I wanted to make it look as good as possible, so I decided to wash and wax the car to make it look nearly new. I thought it would be a good idea to solicit some help in this ambitious plan, so I convinced Tom, Kristie and Leslie to help. Now I didn’t know much about this art, but I had a vision of what the car should look like when we were finished. Washing the car wasn’t terribly complex and we managed to do this quickly. However, waxing was a different story. I gave each helper a cloth and assigned each person a part of the car to rub the wax on. I didn’t know enough to give each worker any instructions on how to get complete coverage of wax on the surface of the car. Consequently, the shine looked patchy and poor. It definitely didn’t match my vision of a gleaming new car and I verbally told my helpers how poorly they were doing.

Ultimately, my volunteers got tired of my less-than-inspiring feedback on the job they were doing and said something on the order of, “OK, Mr. Know-it-all! You can just do it yourself!” and walked off the job. I suppose they went back in the house and told Mom how abusive I was as a car-waxing supervisor. Shortly afterward, she came out to find me rather glumly sitting on the washing bucket, a bit mad about how different the reality was from the result I had envisioned. She didn’t give me a hard time about my poor treatment of my brother and sisters. She just said, “Have you ever heard of a book called How to Win Friends and Influence People?” It was one of my dad’s favorite books by Andrew Carnegie and I knew he had a copy of it in the house somewhere. From this question, I understood that Mom was implying I could benefit from working on my people skills a bit. She always had a special knack to help me see my faults without resorting to scolding or raising her voice.

This was the pattern in our home. I can’t remember my mother ever raising her voice at me or at any of the children. We learned from this approach to handling conflicts that anger and yelling simply were not appropriate. How grateful I am for this invaluable example. I always did my best to follow this example when communicating with my own family when I became a parent myself. The result of my mother’s simple example will bless many generations with the knowledge that the soft-spoken approach gets better results than yelling and screaming every time.