​“Ouvrir. Ouvrir. Ouvrir!”​
 
When I was in college we were required to take at least one year of a foreign language in order to get a Bachelor’s degree. I had never studied any foreign language in high school, so I decided to take French.
 
I don’t know exactly why I chose French. Spanish would have been more practical in Kansas City—and especially in New York City where I eventually wound up living. And I’d always heard that Spanish was an easier language to learn than French, or almost any other language for that matter.
 
But no, I had to take French. Of course I had never been to France. In fact, I had never even been outside the United States. But France always seemed exotic to me. You know, the Eiffel Tower and all those statues and fountains and stuff. What’s more, we all learned in grade school that the French gave us the Statue of Liberty. And didn’t God create Woman in France—aka, Brigitte Bardot? Of course all Americans knew that everyone in France wore a beret—every single day. How cool was that? I’d learn French and someday go to France and fit right in.
 
For French 101 my teacher was a woman named Ms. Pinero. She was younger than most of my other professors. Attractive and nice enough, but with no sense of humor. Whatsoever. And believe me, with our class of over-aged Little Rascals she needed a sense of humor.
 
Ms. Pinero’s first language was Portuguese. I don’t know if she was from Portugal or Brazil. I didn’t even know those countries spoke the same language. I thought both of those countries spoke Spanish. But I just assumed she was from Portugal. So here we have this “Portuguese” professor trying to teach French to a bunch of English-only speaking kids. What could possibly go wrong?
 
Complimenting Ms. P’s “non-sense” of humor was her obsessive and compulsive disorder for pronunciation correctness. This OCD manifested itself on the very first day of our class. We needed to learn how to pronounce the French R, she solemnly informed us.
 
If you don’t know French, let me just say that the French don’t pronounce the letter R the same way Americans do. The French R is spoken sort of in the throat—like you’re choking on a fishbone or something. Or to put it more colloquially, like you’ve got a frog in your throat. So the word “ouvrir,” for example--which means “open”--is pronounced something like “ooh-VGHRIR.”
 
“All together now class, ‘ooh-vghrir, ooh-vggghrir, ooh-VGGGHRIR!’ “ Most of us just kind of went, “er.”
 
This is the only thing I remember about learning French from Ms. Pinero.
We spent so much time on ouvrir and even fancy words with Rs in them like ronchonner, crommeler, and grugner (growl, grumble, and grunt) that we never learned to actually speak or write anything useful in French. I’m exaggerating, of course, but there definitely was a lot of grumbling going on in our class.
 
I managed to get a C grade from Ms. Pinero.
 
Next semester it was time for French 201. I had a kinder and much older professor for this class. I don’t remember her name, but she did try to teach us how to actually say a few French words and phrases and we would practice them with each other. And we were assigned to read stories like “Le Petite Prince.” But because of my poor previous experience, I barely passed this woman’s class with a D grade.
 
So my point is, getting that French R down pat is an exercise in majoring in the minors. It is focusing too much on what doesn’t really matter in the long run. Some may disagree with me, but isn’t the purpose of learning any language to be able to talk to people who speak that language, understand their television commercials, and to read their restaurants’ menus?
 
Ironically, I have since been to France many times—more than 20 separate trips just to Paris alone. But also to many other cities --from Normandy in the north to the Mediterranean coast in the south. I now speak what I call “Taxi French.” In other words, I can get around. Never once have I been made to feel inferior because of my poor French. In fact, I would say that the French love it when you at least try to speak their language. There are other things that are more important to them than saying your Rs correctly. Like not asking for directions without at least first saying “Bonjour.” I wish Ms. P had taught us that.
 
Majoring in the minors doesn’t stop with learning a foreign language. But it does seem to me that much of it is associated with teaching. Take music, as another example.
 
Unless one's goal is to play first fiddle with the New York Philharmonic, most of us just want to play the piano or guitar for the sheer fun of it. My Aunt Juanita, for example, could play the family’s piano and it was so much fun to gather around her at Christmas time and sing carols. Aunt Nita never took a piano lesson as far as I know. I know she didn’t read sheet music. She played “by ear.” In short, she just played what made sense to her. Since she played mostly chords, I doubt seriously that she ever practiced scales for 30 minutes a day or used a metronome.
 
Same thing with the guitar and me. I first picked up my Uncle Joe’s guitar when I was eleven years old. Uncle Joe (Aunt Nita’s brother) had decided at about age 40 that he wanted to learn to play the guitar so he bought one and started teaching himself how to play it. Again with the chords. He did not learn to read music or have any desire to become the world’s next Segovia. Uncle Joe taught me everything he knew about playing the guitar. That took about an hour and a half.
 
When I got my first guitar a year later (I still have it.), it was decided that I should take lessons and “really” learn how to play it. So down to the local music store we went to sign me up for lessons. On the first day my teacher presented me with my lessons book. It’s title should have been, “Guitar 101: Majoring in the Minors.” It was ridiculous. Again with the sheet music, the staffs, the squiggly lines. Hell, I already knew how to play some of the Top 40 songs of the day, so what was that “Long, Long, Ago” crap about?
 
I quit the guitar lessons after six weeks, bought an electric guitar, and went back to playing with my friends in our garages. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not against taking music lessons. Today I have four guitars, two of them electrics. In my sixties I decided to try taking lessons again—but with the explicit agreement that we not major in the minors. I found a great teacher, Andy. Andy taught me what I had always missed—how to play those bending blues notes, chicken pickin’ country music, and just good old rock ‘n’ roll. I studied with Andy for five years.
 
Just for the record, guitarist and singer Jose Feliciano doesn’t read music either. It’s kind of hard to do when you’re blind. That should tell you all you need to know about the importance of learning to read music.
 
I don’t mean to pick on the teaching professions, but they do seem to have more than their fair share of MIM. Other fields where MIM is heavily practiced include politics, marketing, religion, law, and the military. And then there is the granddaddy of them all.
 
Sales.
 
If you’ve ever worked in sales you know people don’t buy features, they buy benefits—well, at least smart people buy benefits. But probably 80% of any consumer demographics will still go for the sizzle instead of the steak. It’s that new car smell that gets you every time. “Yes sir, those are genu-wine leather seats, my friend. Six cows died for your comfort. Take a deep breath.”
 
I suppose the world’s first salesperson was a woman named Eve. She was selling apples long before Steve Jobs. And sales techniques haven’t changed much since she made her first sale to a doofus named Adam. Eve was the first person to major in the minors. She didn’t talk about the health “benefits” of eating an apple every day. Instead, she pointed out to Adam the beautiful red color of her apple. She told him how good it would taste. She told him that she picked the apple herself just for him and that it was free of worms. She polished the apple for him. And like a model on The Price Is Right, she wore a short skirt and smiled a lot.
 
Sales may not be the oldest profession, but it is still probably the easiest to get into. I know this because my first real job was in sales at a strip mall clothing store. I was sixteen. I was clueless about how to sell anything. Believe me, if they would let me into sales, they would let anyone in.
 
A lot of people go into sales because they don’t know what else to do—often after realizing that the degree they got in art history or communications won’t help them get a job. So they think, I’ll try sales and see if I like it. Can you imagine if your doctor did that? Yeah, I think I’ll try heart surgery and see if I like it.
 
With the possible exception of religion, I think sales is the only profession to codify majoring in minors. With teaching and the other professions, majoring in the minors is not usually intentional or malicious. It just sort of happens because it is human nature to get down in the bulrushes with the things that are not really important in the grander scheme of life.
 
But with sales, the goal is to get the other person to buy something as quickly as possible before she changes her mind. There are a number of these “closing” techniques, and they are part and parcel of any formal sales training program. They are all one form or another of majoring in the minors. Here are a couple:
 
The Minor Point Close
 
I mention this one first because, well, we are talking about the minors aren’t we? So if you are in the market for a new sofa, for example, the salesman might ask something like, “Would you want throw pillows with this sofa?” This is a minor point.
 
You didn’t go to the store to buy throw pillows, you went to buy a sofa. But whether you say yes, I would like some throw pillows--or no, I definitely don’t want throw pillows--you’ve basically bought the sofa. Because you have made a decision about the sofa itself. And the salesman now knows it and will start writing up the order for you to sign. “Press hard, there’s three copies.”
 
The Alternate Choice Close
 
This is first cousin to the Minor Point Close. The salesman asks something like, which color sofa would look better in your home, the black one or the beige one? Again, whichever color you say, you’ve likely bought it.
 
There are numerous other sales closing techniques, but these two fully exploit the majoring in the minors philosophy.
 
 
Now for the other side of the coin. As much as I like to poke fun at people who are always majoring in the minors, focusing on the minors is not always a bad thing. As the old saying goes, the Devil is in the details. Someone must take charge of the details, as boring as that may be. Remember the “minor” little nail in the shoe of the horse fable?
 
As the story goes, the nail was probably too small for the horseshoe it was forged to secure. The nail promptly fell out of its shoe. For want of that nail, soon the entire horseshoe fell off of the horse’s foot. When that shoe was lost, the horse (and its rider) was soon lost as well. When the horse was lost, the battle was lost.
 
You’re getting it now, right? When the battle was lost, the war was lost.
 
So the blacksmith who obsesses over the “minor” detail of a lowly nail is actually doing his client a big favor.
 
The worst example of this kind of ignoring the minors in my lifetime I can think of is the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion on January 28, 1986 in which seven American astronauts died. I remember it like it was yesterday. Americans were riveted to their television sets trying to understand how something so terrible could happen. Many of us left work early that day and went home to grieve. 
 
After a post-disaster investigation, it was determined that an “O-Ring”—a rubber-like gasket that separates each of the rocket’s six fuel sections was defective—or at least not able to withstand the unusually cold Florida weather on the night before the launch. Many engineers and others expressed their concerns about the rocket’s O-Rings. But they were ignored.
 
Hey, this is a minor thing, they were told. Don’t worry.
 
The rest, unfortunately, is history.
 
 
Some Final Thoughts: Majoring in the Minors Mottos by Profession
 
Sales: “Sell the sizzle, not the steak.”
 
Politics: “Drain the swamp.”
 
Marketing: “I know that half the money I spend on advertising is wasted. I just don’t know which half.”
 
Law: “It’s immaterial.”
 
Military: “There’s the right way, the wrong way, and the Army way.”
 
Religion: “God is watching; look busy.”

'© 2019, Richard Bradley. All rights reserved.