The summer I was 11 — and mortified by nearly everything my parents did — my dad got a particular kick out of teaching my 9-year-old brother and me his special house-hunting techniques. “In every neighborhood there are people thinking about selling their house,” he said. “The trick is to walk up and down the street where you want to live, ring doorbells, and act neighborly.”

I’d sooner die, I thought, as my brother and I followed behind my dad while he knocked on doors in a Phoenix neighborhood. He politely inquired at each house as to whether the owner — who had placed no sign in his yard or given any other indication, for heaven’s sake, that he wanted to sell his house — would like to do just that. Sure enough, two months later we moved into a house in that very neighborhood. My brother and I were secretly impressed, of course. But how uncool was that? Going door to door!

Dad didn’t hear our whining; he was busy packing fishing poles. As we camped that summer in the northern Arizona mountains, I learned that my dad was one of those rare men who was not too stubborn to ask for directions. Dad talked to everyone, and he always went away with a “scoop” that less curious travelers might have missed, such as where to get the best cheeseburger in Show Low, Arizona, what fishing lures the locals were using to catch the biggest bass, or where to turn off the highway to find a hand pump that produced ice-cold spring water.

At age 14, I applied for a job scooping ice cream. “What do you do when a customer asks for his money back?” the store owner demanded. “What do you do when a customer wants bigger scoops?” “What do you do when a kid spills his ice cream on the floor?”

I looked her in the eye, gave her my best smile, and announced that it was probably good customer service to give a little kid a free scoop if his cone accidentally plopped on the floor.

I got the job. As I walked out the door, the owner called me back inside. “Do you know why I hired you?” she asked. “Because almost every kid that walks in here mumbles into his collar, and that’s not good for business. You’re not afraid to talk to people.” Quite frankly, I was petrified to talk to he, but I was starting to think my dad might be onto something.

Dad’s lesson has stuck with me and I’m trying to pass the lesson on to my 15-year-old son. But I’m finding that much of what I’m hoping to teach him is already there. I see a lot of my dad in Matt, and it makes me smile. I see Papa in the way Matt, at age 7, decided to help our brand-new — and slightly nervous — babysitter feel more at ease by greeting her at the door and promptly introducing her to Fred, his pet frog. I see Papa in the way Matt proudly, and bravely, got up on stage, in his little skunk costume with the big red bow tie, and belted out songs for the “Noah’s Ark” musical at church when he was in kindergarten.

And I treasure the way Matt just naturally assumes the world is a wonderful place and that he has a special place in it, as well as how he figures that, if he speaks up and takes that sometimes scary first step, good things will happen.

“Let’s make a lemonade stand,” Matthew begged when he was a first-grader. He had it all planned out: He’d set up a card table with a hand-drawn “Matthew’s Lemonade” sign attached, place it at the end of our driveway, and make a drive-up drink stand for the commuters who rolled down our busy street. All the proceeds would go to the American Heart Association’s Heart Walk, he decided.

“You can help me make change, Mom,” he announced. “But I can talk to everybody. I’ll sell the lemonade to the people.”

Indeed you did, Matthew. And Papa would have been proud to buy the first cup.