Today I found myself at the Peninsula Home and Garden show.

Where else, but in a sponge booth.

Now, last time I sold sponges I employed the Thin Air Approach to try and convince people to watch my demo. Today, I used a call I’d only hesitantly employed before: Feel the Super Sponge! Three minutes of free entertainment.

I especially targeted the baby boomers with beers. I have to say, it was pretty successful. I realized, though, that my default, Feel the Super Sponge! It sucks and I’ll show you how! is inappropriate with the elder generation. I need to work on that.

After all these years, I’m good at selling sponges. I enjoy it, even. When I have a good crowd of young and old, and I can wave the sponge above the little one’s head and show it doesn’t drip. The grins on those little ones faces!! And I’m better at tailoring the demo to the audience. I am, however, still working on instilling that sense of urgency that if you neglect to use the Super Sponge to suck spills out of the carpet, the mold and the mildew that will build up in the floor boards will endanger the lives of you and your family.

But it doesn’t matter how convincing I am, or how essential sponges actually are to our good health, because you can’t sell sponges when there’s nobody there.

Damn rain. And economy.