Nicknames are popular with car salesmen. Sales professionals with a nom de guerre all swear the names help customers remember them. The fake names also help make them harder to track down when the authorities come knocking.

Some of the names I’ve heard are; Tick, Rocket, Boots, Blue Sky and Plywood. Plywood was a nice enough guy but he should have given more thought to his moniker. But he liked the name.
The most popular alias in this region is Flash. I’ve met a score of guys named Flash. We’ll talk about three of them. Flash Number One had the name forced on him by grown men that should have known better. They thought it was a bit of clever irony because this Flash talked and moved so slow.

The first time I met Flash Number One, he was walking from the service department to the showroom of a Ford dealership. He placed each step with great deliberation and thought. He took a few minutes to walk the three hundred yards when a half-wit salesman called out, “Better hurry, we close in four hours.”

After I got to know Flash One, I realized he was smarter than any of the scrotes that made fun of him. He just took life at a different rate of speed. He kept a running commentary on the activities around him. Flash brought a Mustang Cobra to an arrogant young used car manager for appraisal. A knot of salesman watched as the manager grabbed the keys and said, “I’ll show you boys what this this car can do.” Watch this.” He revved the engine, popped the clutch. It made a farting sound and died.

Flash One said quietly, “I could have done that.”

On secretary’s day, the owner took eight ladies from from the office to lunch. He asked Flash One to drive them in a passenger van. When he returned, we asked him about his lunch date with so many women.

“All that estrogen made my eyes water,” he replied.

It pissed me off when the weasels gave him a hard time. He took it all in slow stride. Flash One had a loyal customer base and while the nit-wits made fun of him, he slowly and steadily made a fortune. The ultimate joke came when Flash One bought his own small town dealership a few years later and refused to hire his former tormentors.