Learning to Pitch

When my sister and I were young, we had three channels to watch on one TV in our farmhouse in rural Missouri. Weekend choices were typically sports that we weren’t into or infomercials. This was of course all before we moved into town and suddenly had *gasp!* cable and my mother had MTV ‘scrambled’ for fear it would turn us into rebel promiscuous teenagers.

One lazy afternoon camped in front of that TV in the basement, we saw it. We became enthralled. We could make our own fruit roll ups. We could make banana chips. We could even make beef jerky. Did I just say that? You’d better believe it. WE COULD MAKE OUR OWN BEEF JERKY!

It was the Ronco Food Dehydrator. We were sold.We memorized those message points, relayed so melodically from that oh-no-she-is-not-scripted hostess. We were as amazed at the demos as was that of-course-they’re-not-actors audience. We readied ourselves and went in for the pitch.

To mom.

We sat her down on the couch and convinced her that we would eat oh-so healthfully since all of our snacks would be sugar-free dehydrated fruit and such. We would waste less produce because once it started giving those about-to-start-turning-brown signals, we would just chop it up and make banana fruit or dried tomatoes. Or whatever. And we would make our own – healthy – fruit roll-ups! We would save money! And it’s so easy to clean! And so many trays – you can dehydrate so much at once! It’s a wave of the future – right here on the farm! We HAVE. TO. GET. IT!

She listened. She processed. She even had questions. But how much electricity does it use? Oh yes, she played right along. Except we were serious.

She must have admired the effort. The pitch. She made the toll-free call. We were in.

It came in the mail a little while later. We did make the banana chips, though they were a little more gooey than chippy. And we made the tomatoes. We put them in plastic baggies and snacked on dried tomatoes – because we could. We had a Ronco Food Dehydrator so we could snack on weird things like that that kids just do not snack on. Never got around to the fruit roll-ups or the beef jerky (can’t imagine why – I didn’t even learn how to brown hamburger until my senior year of college, yes I’m admitting that). But it was great.

Many years later, I gifted it to a friend in exchange for helping us move into an apartment. He was a fraction as excited as we were on that presentation day.

And now here I am in PR. Thanks Ronco Food Dehydrator.

And thanks, mom.