Miracle Treat Day (Dairy Queen)

Some of you may be wondering why, considering that this is the most important financial transaction of our lives, I didn’t go with Beth to buy the house. The answer is that I am a very dangerous person to have on your side in a sales situation. I develop great anxiety in the presence of sales people, and the only way I can think of to make it go away is to buy whatever they’re selling. This is not a major problem with, for example, pants, but it leads to trouble with cars and houses. Here is how I bought our last car. I didn’t dare go directly to the car dealership, so, for several consecutive days—this is the truth—I would park at a nearby Dairy Queen, buy a chocolate cone, then amble over to the car lot, disguised as a person just ambling around with a chocolate cone, and I would try to quickly read the sticker on the side of the car where they explain that the only part of the car included in the Base Sticker Price is the actual sticker itself, and you have to pay extra if you want, for example, transparent windows. After a few minutes, a salesman would spot me and come striding out, smiling like an entire Rotary Club, and I would adopt the expression of a person who had just remembered an important appointment and amble off at speeds approaching 40 miles per hour. What I’m saying is, I shopped for this car the way a squirrel hunts for acorns in a dog-infested neighborhood ...»