20 years and Counting

20 Years and Counting

This past spring Kelly (my wife) and I celebrated our 20th wedding anniversary.  People have asked us, "What's the key to the marriage?"  "Do you have any tips?"  "Did you always know that you were meant for each other?"

Did you always know that you were meant for each other?  That's a great question. As I look back, I do remember the actual date that I KNEW we'd be together forever. 

On March 3^rd, 1994 my Dad died from lung cancer.  Of course, he had smoked since he was seven and apparently his parents weren’t exactly the hands-on type.  I mean you think they would have clued in when their little tike wanted an ashtray for his birthday or wanted more information about a nicotine patch.

Anyway, the weekend after Dad was buried my mom found out that Alan (Dad’s brother) was coming down to pay his last respects at the grave.  Mom wanted everything to be perfect. She told Kelly and me that the grave next to Dad’s had beautiful brown and yellow flowers and that we were in charge of putting flowers on Dad’s grave.  We didn’t realize that mom meant for us to buy similar flowers.  We honestly thought she wanted us to steal them off the “neighbor’s” grave. 

The next morning Kelly and I headed over to Sharon Memorial and we instantly saw the flowers.  However, the place was packed with people.  This meant we had to steal the bouquet subtlety. Since Kelly and I had only been married for 11 months I figured she’d want to leave.  Instead she whispered, “Kneel down and act like you’re mourning for this guy; when the coast is clear rip out the arrangement.” 

I knelt down and pretended to grieve uncontrollably for at least 10 minutes; finally Kelly said, “The coast is clear; do it.”  I grabbed the stems and pulled as hard as I could.  The flowers wouldn’t come out of the vase.  I was panicking and starting to sweat.  I whispered to Kelly, “I think he’s holding them.”  We both started laughing.  As I stood up ready to leave my sweet innocent bride looked at me with stone cold eyes and said, “Let me try.”  After a minute of yanking at the grave site bundle and swearing softly under her breath, Kelly noticed a chain holding the flowers in place.  She undid the chain and shoved the flowers into Dad’s grave.  Mission accomplished.

Unfortunately we never put the flowers back on the neighbor’s grave and one day Mom got a call.  It was the neighbor’s wife.  She screamed, “Did you steal the flowers off my husband’s grave?”  Mom just hung up the phone and till this day we pretend that phone call never happened.

I knew at that moment Kelly wasn't easily embarrassed, she was willing to take a risk, and she was seriously funny and I'll take that any day over sugar, spice, and everything nice!

 

How to become a follower!!

This past week I had a unique conversation with a gentleman named Steven at a Fortune 500 company. He was being a condescending jerk as I asked him some questions about his company. He explained to me in detail how he was a "soldier" at his company. "I follow the orders of my boss and never question what he tells me to do," Steven said proudly. He continued to lecture me for the next twenty minutes about how if he makes a mistake, he corrects it and NEVER does it again.

Considering that I give talks across the country to college students about leadership and entrepreneurship, it struck me that I might be missing business opportunity. Steven's overwhelming bravado was an epiphany. Maybe I should conduct a workshop and title it, "How To Become a Follower" with the subheading " Strive for Mediocrity."

It would be a six-week course where people with a GPA higher than a 1.0 would be barred from the class. All Follower-in-Training meetings would begin and end with awkward silence since we wouldn't be sure if the meeting had started or was over. In addition, anyone who uses a polysyllabic word (where we have to clap to count all the syllables) would have to leave the group. Ironically, "follower" is polysyllabic so I suggest you say "lackey." And it goes without saying that if you have a brilliant idea during the class that you can't squash in your head, you don't deserve to be a potential follower.

And of course we would email each other our success stories. In other words, if we found that perfect job where we could be a groveling, brown-nosing, ass-kisser, we would scream it to the world...unless the boss said to be quiet.

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