Whenever I Call You Friend

If you are reading this…I most likely call you my friend.  After all, you are, in fact, reading this.  

Friendship is very important to me.  You might say it is the buoy that prevents the current from taking me under.  And by current – I mean the endless flow of activity happening in the present (you get two for the price of one with that word – - ‘endless flow’ and ‘happening in the present’) (and yes, I DID major in English). 

I have often said that I operate in this world much in the same way that a bat uses echolocation – I understand where I am and recognize where I am headed by the feedback I receive from what – and more importantly who – surrounds me. 

 My history is recorded in persons – places and things are a distant blur in comparison.  Entire eras are identified by what might seem to others to be rather uncommon classifications:  “Sue, Betty, Pam, Jamie and the years of Marie Callender’s.”  “Lori” actually represents three distinct periods in the epic also known as my life.  If you are reading this (and let’s face it – you can’t deny that you are now) then I can almost guarantee that your name is prominently displayed somewhere in the story.

I have recently learned that true friendship does not suffer from the decays of time or distance.  Real friendship is as permanently fixed as any landmark that exists – sometimes unseen – and yet unchanging.  And like any landmark –recognition on sight immediately takes you back to every time you have been there before, while offering the exciting opportunity to make new memories.

Friends have taught me the most important life lessons – not the least of which is how to be a friend – an education I consider invaluable. I would like to share ten points (in no specific order) from the rather unorthodox list of what you have taught me about being a friend (yes, you):

A friend

…loves at all times (the Bible taught me that one – no taking credit here)

…is as happy when you succeed as you are

…will listen to the same story over and over –believing you will eventually stop telling it

 …will call you out on your bad behavior – but love you just the same – BECAUSE they love you

…will work things out – even when it is difficult

…recognizes your weaknesses and your strengths and never capitalizes on either

…is equally ready to laugh and cry with you, at you and for you

…recognizes that networking is not the same as friendship

…will honor your friendship with honesty and integrity

…pushes you to go further than you ever imagined you were capable of going

So, thank you (you know who you are) for being a part of the landscape, history and lesson of the saga that is me.  Thank you for being the moral of the story.

We are all travelers in the wilderness of the world, and the best that we can find in our travels is an honest friend.  

Robert Louis Stevenson

Entrepreneur

My son once suggested that I should open my own business.  Just as the glow of his obvious confidence in me began to warm, he threw the following ice water words my direction: “then YOU could be the idiot that you work for.” 

I have frequently been told that I have what it takes to be a successful entrepreneur.  Each and every time that I have been invited to a “no pressure” home sales party, I have been cornered and tagged by the salesperson.  Tastefully decorated living rooms (clearly the result of a home decor party) weirdly begin to morph into scenes perilously close to unbelievably elegant deer stands…and I become the buck (or bucks – big bucks) unexpectedly caught in the scope of  hunters who are carefully camouflaged in cardigans and pearls.

They regale me with tales of potential untold wealth (which I suppose is actually told wealth as they carefully delineate riches the likes that one can only imagine…pink Cadillacs…I never…).  They encourage me, with absolutely zero hidden agenda, remarking on my sparkling wit and natural speaking ability.  They remark, after knowing me for… oh…fifteen minutes… on my life calling – previously unknown to me – yet glaringly apparent to them — as a natural born salesperson.  Unwavering, solid as the stone cookie sheet that I have coincidentally just purchased, I assure them, each and every time, that I am NOT, nor will I ever be, a salesperson – naturally born or otherwise.

They go in for the kill.  The death blow comes in the same form each and every time.  “If you will sign up tonight to be a representative for this fine company, our lovely hostess (the friend – who invited you – whose life will cease to have meaning without this apple peeler/corer/slicer – who would do the same for you) will receive $100.oo in free merchandise.”  My knees go weak, I stagger to the kitchen table and trembling…I sign on the dotted line.  I have taken the proverbial bullet smack between the eyes.

The $200.oo or so “starter kit” arrives in a box that looks a little too much like a grave marker for comfort.  And now, I have become the hunter.  I don cardigan and pearls and prey upon my loved ones to open their hunting ground living spaces to victims…I mean friends… of theirs who are in dire need of candles, cooking utensils, cosmetics, plasticware and home accessories.  I stutter, shake and sweat.  I talk endlessly about how each item can be purchased at the local Walmart for 1/10th the price.  I sell…not one item.

Please don’t ask me about Amway.

Little Job of Horrors

In these days when unemployment is a genuine concern for so many, it is much too serious a time to be frivolously lighthearted regarding the topic of “the boss” (and I don’t mean Bruce).  So it is with the deepest gravity, and most sincere honesty that I confess that in my lifetime I have worked for three separate employers who gave me the distinct feeling that I had unknowingly signed on to play a bit part in an extremely bad B-movie  – Clash of the Tyrants.

I worked for two years under the administrative direction of a man who channeled Danny DeVito as Napoleon.

If the actor who played “Lurch” on the Addams Family was contracted to portray Attila the Hun, then I reported directly to him for a good portion of my career.

And, in a zippy twist of unlikely casting, if Brad Garrett as “Robert” on Everybody Loves Raymond was asked to play the part of Joseph Stalin – oh – and if Joseph was on serious psych meds – yep – I worked for him as well.

My current boss is neither tyrannical nor reminiscent of any actor or poorly made production.  Currently.

Mirror…Mirror…at the mall….

The three-way mirror is not my friend.  If it is your friend you have my permission to eat one dozen Crispy Cream donuts…now…really…I mean it…consider that an order. 

Whose idea was it to install this IMAX equivalent ( “SEE MORE…HEAR MORE…FEEL MORE” ) in dressing rooms?  I see more than I knew existed in this solar system, hear more heavy sighs and deep breathing than the recipient of an obscene phone call, and feel more demoralized than …pick a politician.  If the purpose of this fun house looking glass is to encourage shoppers to make a purchase by offering a full 360 of their form (which coincidentally is the weight I appear to be in this reflective travesty), let’s just say they missed the mark (which seems next to impossible as the target is so LARGE). 

If merchants were really thinking about the well being of their clientele, the glass in three-way mirrors would be replaced with the material found in the passenger side mirrors of automobiles – “objects in the mirror may be closer than they appear.”  From far away – I look pretty trim.

Social Entomology

Earlier today I made the flip remark that I was a former caterpillar who had morphed into a butterfly.  I started thinking about it, and realized that I had no idea what that statement truly meant – other than to suggest that I had changed in some tangibly evident fashion.  I decided to take a look at what I was really saying when I compared my younger self to a “larval form of a member of the order Lepidoptera.”  With the ready assistance of Wikipedia, I found that the life I led prior to metamorphosis had more in common with the caterpillar than I could have imagined. 

Caterpillars are “voracious feeders, and many of them are considered pests.”   Also known as me… in junior high. 

“Most caterpillars have tubular segmented bodies…they move through contractions of muscles in the rear segments.”  As do I.

“Many caterpillars are fuzzy.”  Heck no, the fro won’t go!

“Caterpillars have soft bodies that can grow rapidly between molts.”  For every young girl who was under 5’ in the fourth grade and over 5’7” in the fifth – can I get an amen?

“The appearance of a caterpillar can often repel a predator, the markings and certain body parts can make it seem poisonous, bigger in size thus threatening….”  Pretty much high school in a nutshell.

“Caterpillars have evolved various means of defenses.”  Humor, possibly?

I really need to google “butterfly.”

Movie 101

I like movies.  I have always liked movies.  And, by the way, not only do I like movies – I like going to movies.  I have fun eating a feedbag of popcorn, drinking 2 liters of soda, and consuming the same amount of candy that I would typically disperse to the neighborhood on Halloween.  I enjoy previews.  I can even tolerate the advertisements that have extended the preview time frame from ten minutes to thirty.  The sticky floor of a theater does not bother me.  The arctic airconditioning does not deter me from taking my place among the entertainment seeking masses.

It is the masses who create the problem.  Not the bulk of the mass (in scientific terms) but the unfortunate few who either do not understand that their voices are in fact audible, or who function under the misguided notion that they have something to add to the entertainment quotient by intentionally voicing LOUD commentary.

To the former I say this — unless you have test run and purchased a cone of silence which is currently in use — you can be heard.  To the latter this — no one who paid to see the movie wants to hear anything that you have to say — even if by some stroke of impossibility you happen to be the wittiest and most insightful human being on the planet.  If you were insightful you would KNOW we want to hear THE MOVIE.

Don’t get me started on the seat kickers.