It's My Party (And I'll Cry If I Want To)

I have heard that in Europe they don't do this, but in America we do. When you meet someone new here in the good ol' USA, what is one of the first questions you ask?

"So, what do you do?"

We use the answer to that pervasive question to establish relationships. If the guy has a better job, more money, is a self-made something-or-other, a CEO, a CFO, a COO or some other lofty acronym, then we know we have certain choices. We can envy him, honor him, patronize him, hit him up for a job...or a loan, or wonder why a loser like that is doing so much better than me.

If he, on the other hand, is unemployed, an hourly worker, or uneducated, then we know we can relate differently to him. Hey, maybe I can impress him with my pedigree. I can pity the poor bastard. Or, I can assume he has little to offer me and kind of blow him off, give him the old stiff-arm.

SO, what do I do? Well, some days, as little as possible. Others, as much as necessary. But most days, more than you can shake a stick at.

What do I do? Well, if you had asked me that question sometime between 1980 and 1996, I would have answered, "I am a minister." If you had asked me sometime between 1997 and 2000, I would have answered, "I am a salesman, no store manager, wait...I am an entrepreneur. Yeah! Enterpreneur." 2001 - 2004? "I'm a middle school English teacher. (God help me!)"

Ask me today, and I might answer with the Emperor Severus of Rome, "I have been everything, and everything is nothing." Severus was near death when he said it. Hopefully, I am nowhere near it. Although, as today is my birthday, I am certainly nearer than I was.

Birthdays are like that for me these days. Time to take stock, reflect, ruminate, relive, revisit, regret, rejoice. I should be wiser by now. Wealthier, too, probably. But, I suppose, when considering Ben Franklin's three marks of good fortune - being healthy, wealthy, and wise - batting .333 isn't so bad.

So, a tidbit of wisdom...something I have learned in my forty-six years, something to share with the random soul that reads this whisper-in-a-windstorm blog of mine. Hmmmm (scratching my greying goateed chin). OK, I've got it. here it is...

Time marches on and it doesn't stop to pick you up, dust you off, or pat your back; moreover, it doesn't have to stop in order to give you a swift crotch-kick now and again. What time does with you is inevitable and irrevocable. What you do with time...is all that matters.

Happy birthday. Pass the ammo.

Too Jaded To Be Motivated?

Yesterday, I went to a mega-business seminar at Reunion Arena in Dallas. It was so big, in fact, that the crowd filling the entire lower bowl of Reunion was really the spill-over crowd. The really big gathering was down the street in the newer, larger American Airlines Arena.

Truthfully, I went there the same way I go to all such meetings, with a suspicious mind, expecting to be rah-rah'd to death. As far as the Master of Ceremonies and the host company were concerned, I got precisely what I expected. Cheese, man! Cheesy cheese.

Peter and Tamara Lowe, the couple behind these gatherings, have been at it for two decades. They look like Ken and Barbie, if Ken were redheaded and goofy-looking and Barbie had Tammie Faye Bakker hair. The Master of Ceremonies for the day was annoying enough to wish for a marksman with a tranquilizer gun to take aim from the balcony...whether at him or me is immaterial.

That said, I found myself motivated. I did. Steve Forbes was the lead-off speaker. He was engaging, lucid, full of real-life examples of ordinary people who persevered to achieve extraordinay things. The Zig Ziglar representative, a fellow who was maybe the best speaker of the day but whose name escapes me, made me laugh with his well-timed jokes...and think about what it is I am doing and where I am headed.

But the words that landed the most heavily on my glass jaw came from super-duper salesman Brian Tracy. First, he warned about living your life on a place called "Someday Isle." You know, "Someday, I'll take a stab at that business idea I have that would revolutionize the so-and-so industry." Or, "Someday, I'll work harder, dedicate myself more, figure this thing out." Not today, of course. I'm tired. The boss is beating me down. The kids won't shut up...and neither will the wife.

Tracy went on to ask for a show of hands from the people who were self-employed in the crowd. Maybe one-fourth raised their hands. He proceeded to tell the rest of the crowd to get their hands up, too. The truth is we are ALL self-employed. No matter where you ply your wares, you are an independent contractor selling your services to the highest bidder. You aren't in business for some major department store or pharmaceutical company or grocery chain. You are in business for yourself. You work for your future, your family, your retirement, your dreams, your goals.

That...struck a chord with me. If you look at your job that way, it can't help but change your approach, can it? It is...empowering, but it also places the responsibility for yourself squarely on your own shoulders. At least, that is how I see it.

So...yeah, I'm still jaded, but motivated. And that's OK, right?

I Found You (On My Way To Me)

I found her on my way to becoming myself. At the time, it didn't seem all that unusual to me. We were eighteen and the world made perfect sense. Why shouldn't I have found my soulmate and she hers? Wasn't that the way it was supposed to be anyhow?

Twenty-seven years later (and counting), I have come to understand just how truly blessed I was. When I count the marriages that have disintegrated around us, I am astounded, not just that we made it this far, but that we are both still glad we did.

When you are eighteen, you are not even you yet. You are still learning, growing, evolving, developing. That two kids just barely old enough to vote could say "I do" in 1980 and think, "yeah, I still do!" in 2007 is nothing short of a modern day marital miracle.

I would love to take credit for that accomplishment. Trouble is, I can't. I have failed her in so many ways and so many times. I have given her more than ample reason to toss in the towel, say she gave it the old college try, and make the best of what is left of herself. But she has no quit in her. She still believes, hopes and loves.

Some will chalk it up to good fortune, the planets aligning, or just plain stubbornness. I tend to feel the same way about my good fortune as Abraham's trusted servant felt when given the ominous task of seeking a suitable bride for Isaac. When he found the beautiful, trustworthy Rebekah, he praised his God and said, "I being in the way, the Lord led me..." [Genesis 24:27, KJV]. The elated servant found his girl on the way to find a girl.

Hey, I was just on my way. And along the way, I have often gotten in the way. Still, the Lord led me.

Blessed be the name of the Lord.

Free The Jena 6 Video

Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?

"Excuse me, Sir. Could you tell me what day it is?"

"It's Thursday, man."

"No. I mean the date."

"Oh, um, September something-or-other. Twentieth, I think?"

"Yeah, but I mean the year."

Blank stare.

Does anyone beside me feel like you woke up in the wrong decade (or century, for that matter) this morning? Here we are, seven years into a new century of enlightenment, advancement, and human progress and buses were loaded all across the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave and pointed toward the little jerkwater town of Jena, Louisiana to march for the liberation of the Jena 6.



Meanwhile, HBO's favorite race card player, Bryant Gumbel, on his TV program Real Sports, will air an interview with black NFL quarterback Donovan McNabb tonight in which McNabb claims he is under extra scrutiny as an NFL quarterback because of the color of skin. Here is a quote from the McNabb interview:

"There's not that many African-American quarterbacks, so we have to do a little
bit extra," McNabb tells HBO. "Because the percentage of us playing this
position, which people didn't want us to play ... is low, so we do a little
extra.""I pass for 300 yards, our team wins by seven, [mimicking] 'Ah, he
could've made this throw, they would have scored if he did this."

I don't plan to enter into any debate over the merits of the march in Jena or the validity of McNabb's assertions. All I really want to do is rub my eyes and wake up back in the twenty-first century, where a man is judged not by the color of his skin, but the content of his character...



Whether he is a quarterback that couldn't seem to the throw the ball in the ocean off the bough of a schooner...or a black kid in the backwoods of a state progress apparently forgot.

It's 2007, dammit!

Remember When...

Driving into work this morning, I was listening to my favorite morning drive radio program, the Dunham and Miller Show on KTCK 1310 The Ticket (Dallas, TX). The Ticket is a sports station that features both sports talk and general "guy" talk. During the 8:10 segment, they got into "gas station" talk.

What childhood memories they provoked! I had all but forgotten what a magical place the gas station, or "filling station" as my parents called it, really was. If you are long enough in the tooth to remember the attendant in the blue polyesters with his name stitched in red on a white oval patch just above the left shirt pocket; if you can recall the ever-present red shop rag dangling from a hip pocket, the plastic bottle of window cleaner and a squeegie in his hand, a tire gauge in his shirt pocket; if you have ever uttered the words - or at least heard your dad say, "Fill 'er up"; if you remember when the gas pumps were tall and narrow and the numbers weren't LCD but were white numbers on black wheels that rolled as the gas was pumped; if you remember the vending machines with the Tom's peanut crunch treats, or the Orange Crush soda pop, or the assorted Lance's chips choices; if you ever said yes to the question of whether to check the oil, or watched appreciatively as the attendant checked the air level in each tire with care; if you can recall the garage stalls with the hydraulic lifts for doing everything from changing the oil in your car to replacing the starter; if you remember when Exxon and Mobil were two entities and Exxon wasn't even Exxon anyways, but Enco; if you remember the Sinclair Dinosaur, how magical the Texaco star seemed; if any of this strikes a chord of familiarity, then you know where I am coming from.

If you don't remember any of these things, you don't know what you missed. You didn't pay the pump back then. Nor did you turn your hard-earned dollar over to some dude of Eastern descent who makes ten times the money you do but still buys his clothes at a thrift shop and apparently thinks daily hygiene is superfluous. The owner's name was Joe or Mac or Jimmy...or in the case of one small Texas town, David.

Yep! My own Dad was the proud owner of a Mobil filling station back when. And for a period of my adolescence, I roamed the magical, manly place without restriction or retribution. I even filled a few tanks and tires, wiped some windhields, and changed the oil in a few old clunkers. It was a good place for a boy to learn what it means to be a man, to take proper care of the things you have, to be courteous and friendly to customers, to develop relationships, to learn responsibility.

I am glad I was there...and just as glad I was reminded of that time and place this morning.