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Christine Schoefer: Good Words

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When Christine Schoefer decides to help her husband buy a truck, her way with words makes all the difference.

“I want this truck,” my husband shouted when I came through the front door. Proper greetings have never been his strong suit. I walked over and saw a white pickup on his laptop screen. Armin read the specifications that so impressed him. “A sixteen-year-old truck with just 25,000 miles on it is unheard of,” he said. “And it’s only $12,500 dollars.”

His excitement dimmed as he told me that the owner hadn’t responded to his emails; he assumed the truck had sold immediately. “I really wanted it,” he said after a while. Past tense. He’d given up.

My husband rarely wants anything, so I decided to help him get the truck. Once I found the listing on my own laptop, I reached out. “Hello there! Your truck is my dream come true. Is it still available? If yes, could I come and see it?”

The reply popped up immediately. “Tell me why this is your dream come true.” I wrote back: “My husband has been looking for a pick up like this to transport materials for his solar projects. So far, he’s had no luck. This would make him very happy.”

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Two minutes passed. And then: “How about tomorrow at 10? Here’s my address.” Armin didn’t believe me when I told him we had a date to see the truck. I had to show him the emails.

The following day, we met the owner. He told us he’d received close to a hundred responses to his ad. Mine stood out, he said, because it started with a salutation, contained no spelling mistakes and didn’t sound like it was written by a transactional robot.

Armin smiled when we cruised the Berkeley hills on the test drive. He smiled when he traded a check for the car keys. And I, a writer, smiled because good words had made all the difference. With a Perspective, I’m Christine Schoefer.

Christine Schoefer lives in Berkeley and writes about everyday life.

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