To Succeed is to Never Give Up

The above statement may or may not be true, but I can tell you for sure that I succeeded in something last week. I’m not sure exactly what it was, but I did it. You see part of working at Smith’s 英会話Hirakata, means that during certain key times of the day, we need to be out at the station handing out fliers to drum up business. Of course we spend a few hours everyday doing this, and as you can imagine after a while we start to see the same people going to and from the station. There just so happens to be this one lady, I’ve seen her for about a year, and every time she walks by me, she looks right at me, holds up one hand and says, “NO!”. I’ve always thought it was kind of funny, because she is just so serious. She’s done the same thing for about 9 months, but about 3 months ago, I decided to change things a little. So now, everytime she walks by me, I say…..”yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes”, and of course she keeps walking at the same speed, holds up one hand and says, “NO!” and just keeps walking. Again, I think this is really funny. But last week, I happened to see one of the other Smith Hirakata teachers while I was handing out flyers. Her name is Yasuko. While Yasuko and I were talking I saw the lady coming down the street, and as she approached I said “yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes”, and she of course said, “NO!”. However, Yasuko the teacher I was speaking with is Japanese, and so the woman stopped. I told Yasuko, yes, every time I see her she says “NO!”, and she just keeps walking. Yasuko laughed. The lady spoke Japanese to me, and thankfully Yasuko translated. I asked Yasuko, “What did she say?”, and Yasuko laughed, she said “I’ve told you ‘no’ many times, but everyday you still ask me. Why don’t you give me something better”. Now I was laughing too. I told the woman. I know, I know, you don’t want a flier, but thank you very much anyway.  The woman laughed and walked away. Yasuko went back to the classroom, and I continued to hand out fliers. When out of the blue I saw the lady again. She walked right up to me and said “YES!”. I couldn’t believe it. After all of this time, she actually took a flier. I felt victorious. Victorious!

Jerry