From KCRW and KCRW.com, I'm Bob Carlson, and this is Unfictional.

Unfictional is KCRW's program of stories and Original Documentaries as part of KCRW's Independent

Producer Project, a laboratory for independent radio producers, writers, and performers. and today on the program, your future in sales, three stories

about young people being let in on the art of persuasion.

Beginning with this story from comic and storyteller Jackie Cation in her

house sales was part of the basic building blocks of her upbringing she learned

all she needed to know about selling from the expert living in her house.

My father is a salesman and he loves the pitch, he loves the sale, he loves the life.

He thinks that to not take advantage of a sucker is a wasted opportunity.

He sold aluminum siding, he sold tupays, he sold mausoleum crips.

My father has a full head of hair, when he used to sell tupays he would comb his hair like a

to pay and then pretend to adjust it. You're like you should get one of these. That's not going anywhere.

The triumph of my father's aluminum siding career is that there is a brick house in South Milwaukee, Wisconsin that has aluminum siding on it. A house made out of brick with some siding.

How did he make that sale? You don't have to ask him. He'll tell you anyway.

You should have heard the pitch. I just kept telling this guy, low brick will chip and we were like dad was that

fair to sell granted low maintenance aluminum siding to a man who owns a low maintenance brick home. And without missing a beat, he's like,

fair, what am I Santa? Am I Gandhi? Am I some kind of social worker? I got overhead.

Because that's what he used to call us kids.

And he would never help us sell stuff for school because it's your sale.

You closed the deal.

Well I was seven the first time he sent me out to work the neighborhood for Little League.

I come home, he's sitting on the couch, how did it go?

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