Old Lessons Remembered
Posted on November 25th, 2009 | PopularNumbers related to this post:
1983 – year A Christmas Story made all of our lives better
9 – my age when I watched the just released A Christmas Story at a theater in Barrington, Illinois for David Young’s birthday. (Is there a better age to see that movie for the first time?!?!? That’s like being 16 in 1951 and reading The Catcher in the Rye at the bookstore.)
There’s an old saying that I first heard while I was working for Frederic W. Cook back in my youth. Fred was explaining to me why he was still holding his Peapod shares after they started to drop like a rock. We both bought them at $4 and I sold mine at $16. I told Fred to sell his too and I’ll never forget his response…
“Always dance with the one who brought you.”
If you’ve ever heard of Peapod, you know how expensive a dance that was for my old boss Fred. I’m not quite sure if he ever sold those shares. I do know that while it was great advice for your prom, it’s not so good for holding Peapod shares while the dotcom bubble is bursting. Maybe Fred should also have remember the saying, “If you want to dance, you’ve got to pay the band.”
I mention this because today I re-learned that lesson, although not because of any stocks I own (I don’t own any right now, by the way). I did something today that used to be standard fare and has now become a foreign concept…I called a stranger to ask for something. That used to be a staple in my life, reaching out and connecting with people and connecting those people with each other. I was afraid of no one, even that Scott Farkus (He has yellow eyes!!! So help me, God. Yellow eyes!!!) type bully named Rejection McFailureson.
So I was surprised by what happened today. After reading about Tim Geithner’s new request to expand the power of the US Treasury to include putting businesses into receivership — that means the federal government owns them — I was perplexed. I always thought that the FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation) had that power. And since the FDIC is owned by the US Government, isn’t his request a bit redundant? What is he up to? It sounds a bit like the Patriot Act to me, but I digress. The point is that my confusion led me to Google, where I attempted to find someone at the Treasury Department or FDIC who could explain to me what I was missing. I found the name of Richard Schmalzer, the Ombudsman for the FDIC San Francisco office. So I called him.
When the phone started to ring, a funny thing happened: all of a sudden I got a few jitters, wondering what in the world I was doing. What would I say? Would he refuse to speak to me? Or unleash a diatribe of unpleasantries before slamming down the phone?
Somewhere in the aging process I forgot what I had done to get me where I am today. I had stopped dancing with the one who brought me. People always say “If I only knew then what I know now…”, but today I felt like I should have been saying, “If I only remembered today what I knew then…”
So what happened with our friend the Ombudsman? Did he tear me a new one for disrupting his day? No. I got his voicemail. I left a message explaining who I was and why I was calling. He hasn’t called back, but that isn’t the point. I remembered who I used to be and how valuable that was. I remembered that just because I’m not 18 anymore doesn’t mean I can’t have the ambition and passion of an 18 year old. I remembered that I connected with many more people before I had even heard of email than I do now with my fancy twitter account, facebook, and this blog. I remembered that my life is now especially rich because of those connections, the ones made years ago by someone I had forgotten who didn’t have bad knees or suffer terrible hangovers. I remembered to remember.
I have many friends and clients who are either newly unemployed, scared shitless they soon will be, or safe for now in jobs and industries that have somehow survived the downturn while doing things like they did before. My advice to them, you, and now myself: Take some time to remember how you have accomplished the things you are most proud of in your life and dance with the one who brought you. Just don’t do the robot — you aren’t 18 anymore.
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