What RV buyers and teenagers have in common

By Chuck Woodbury
PUBLISHER
A few years ago (OK, many years ago), I was a teenager. I remember early one morning when my mother opened my bedroom door and asked me, “Good morning, Chuck. How does it feel to be a teenager?”

I don’t recall my answer. But I bet I was excited about reaching such an impressive milestone.

Now, about the headline above — how RV buyers and teenagers are alike.

What I am thinking is about love, young love, teenage love — love that isn’t really love at all. Let’s be honest, it’s lust. Personally, my creator designed me with a genetic algorithm that drove me to a fixation on romance, falling in love. But lust is love on training wheels.

I had my eyes on pretty girls since kindergarten. But when I became a teenager, it’s as if my diet had suddenly included some sort of mid-20th century Viagra. But then, I imagine I was not alone among my horny young buddies.

Geez… I was consumed with finding a girl of my very own. The problem was that I was shy. I was afraid of girls. The prettier they were, the shyer I was. I have not totally outgrown that.

But I can say now, that way back then if I were to come upon an appealing girl who would give me the time of day, and even hint at some degree of attraction to me, I would fall head over heels in love, or lust or infatuation or whatever you want to call it.

But like I said, I was shy. It wasn’t until my 20s, especially when I got into a college fraternity where my buddies and I majored in girls and beer (with a minor in girls with beer), that I got some confidence.

Still, I was still basically shy. But I could still easily fall in love (lust) if a girl looked at me in a certain way. And it came to pass that I began to go out on dates, and even enter into relationships, which seemed important to me at first, but were ultimately flights of fancy. I know now what was going on: It was about raging hormones, it was like a huge fire inside me that only a girl looking deeply and passionately into my eyes could control. If she were beautiful and sexy, then call in the air tankers — that fire was out of control.

Most often, I confess, the attraction was based on looks. I was young, naive, stupid and unaware that physical beauty was only skin deep. What usually happened was that maybe a few months after entering a relationship, I would silently utter, “Oops, what have I done?” Or just as likely, she might have thought the same. And so we would ride off into our respective sunsets.

It took me a long time to mature enough to understand that inner beauty is what ultimately matters. Oh, appearance counts. But it’s usually fleeting — kinda like eating Chinese food.

And so now, in this RV industry I stumbled into many years ago, I see RV buyers displaying behavior similar to what I did years ago, except toward RVs, not women. Way too many buyers buy based on appearance, or the “bling,” as the industry calls it. They look no further than what is before their eyes in choosing to buy or not to buy. If it’s pretty, that’s enough. It’s about a dream.

“Oh, honey, I just love this floorplan.” I have heard those words uttered a hundred times from couples sitting on an RV couch at an RV show. You can almost see the stars in their eyes.

They sit there, quiet, thinking, trying to rationalize in any way they can that the RV is the one for them. How it’s constructed, the reputation of the manufacturer or, above all, that buying an RV is a horrible investment (generally true with all RVs) is not considered. They are in love and that is that is that.

And then an RV salesman walks in and says, “Nice RV, huh?” They nod their heads. “I love the kitchen” she says and the man nods. “I love the big TV,” he says. “Well,” the salesman says, “I can have you camping in this by the lake next weekend. Our special price of $599 a month is good today only. What do you think?”

The man nods. The woman nods. “Let’s do it.”

They are self-hypnotized into a dream about adventure and freedom.

They buy the rig. Then they camp on weekends for a year. They have mechanical problems up the yingyang they never imagined. They collectively gulp when they realize they’ll be paying that $599 a month until their infant daughter is working on her Master’s Degree. By then, of course, the RV will be junk.

Now, you will say “What a negative old fart you are, Charles.” And I will say, yes, you’ve got an excellent point there. But I am an old fart who has watched countless RV buyers go through this process. Just like teenagers, they fell in love with an idea (buying an RV) based on lust, not good reason.

Hopefully, it didn’t happen with you. You’re too smart! But it happens. I wish RV buyers would understand that the powerful dream of owning an RV can impair their judgment as surely as raging hormones can impair those of a young person looking for love.