This exercise feels useful. Below, the second sentence is improved, and maybe the third.
Flipped sentences
I sold kitchen knives from a catalog in the summer between high school and college. I convinced myself these were the best knives at any price, but I couldn’t convince people to buy much. For my dad’s birthday, I did get my mom to order a jackknife. In the mail it came. As my mom drove me to the airport for a church missions trip, the package was in the car. To demonstrate the safety mechanism, I opened up the knife in the passenger seat. I sold donuts from behind a counter the next summer.
It’s the third day of summer, and the air in New York has gone cold. How widely do the schools teach children that the seasons are even and regular, a tree turning white, light green, deep green, orange? Is all writing the tension between that tree and each year’s reality? Does this make any sense to an Australian?
To your first version of the story I referred, in order to compare. Neat!