excerpt from “Gil Butsen Ford” by Steve Amick

Here at Gil Butsen Ford, we’d like to provide you with some free personal information—information that’ll put a smile on your face! That’s just the sort of extra service you can expect from Gil Butsen Ford. You come on down to Gil Butsen Ford, and the first thing we’re looking to put you in is a good mood. Second, we’ll put you in a brand-new or previously owned Ford vehicle, but first thing is that stuff about the mood. At Gil Butsen Ford, we know that how you’re doing isn’t often given that sort of high priority—not at home, not at your workplace down at the school board administration office. Certainly not in Pensions and definitely not from those other two in the next cubicle, Jessica M. and Jessica P. Those whorebags wouldn’t give two hoots about what kind of a mood you’re in—let alone if you’re driving something safe, comfortable, and reliable. Not unless it’s your turn to carpool for lunch and you have to chauffeur their skinny asses to Bennigan’s. And then they seem to care very deeply about what sort of car you drive, don’t they, taking it almost as a personal affront, all freaked out about a few mushy animal crackers or having to move the booster seat, or making cracks about how the whole Buick smells like your dead bachelor uncle, and who drives a 1996 Buick LeSabre, anyway? That’s not the sort of business we’ll give you at Gil Butsen Ford. Gil Butsen has a credo and it’s this: Don’t Give People the Business. Why do it? Why get on them about things they can’t help, like the fact that their car is an embarrassment and also a Buick and smells like their uncle, who was a fine, lovely man and had many great qualities, such as his lifelong devotion to scouting and his love of Spike Jones (the one with the bike horns and penny whistles, not the movie director). Not everyone has a credo—certainly not those two ninnies in the next cubicle—but when you have one, it should be a good one, and that’s ours. That’s it in a nutshell. But here at Gil Butsen Ford, we also say, You CAN Help It, in a Way, because we’re experts at coming up with clever payment plans that make it, in fact, possible and easy to get you in a Ford Fusion, Focus, or Edge, 2014 or newer. Because at Gil Butsen, we feel there’s no such thing as “no way,” and also, thirty-eight is not dead, no matter what those catty bitches think. At Gil Butsen Ford, we can offer you several examples of actual friends of friends whom we’ve really met—women, with kids—who successfully started over in the dating scene—at your age, yes—and did not have to settle for someone unattractive or cruel or boring and “safe,” the type of guy who would never discover that little spot behind your ear and how it gives you goose bumps, someone whose best feature is just that he isn’t playing you for a dope, two-timing you, or taking a creepy overinterest, all too fast, in filling the daddy role for your two boys. And also, we offer balloons.