Kathy climbed up on the counter the other night to reach way up and back in one of her cabinets. “Do you need any help?” I said. “Nope,” she said, “I found them!”
She stepped down with the salt and pepper shakers in hand. Looking at both, she grinned, “I’ve been thinking about these two.”
See: Why She Was Smiling
As I turned into the driveway at work early in the morning, I decided to catch all the color on my BlackBerry…
Grant left a voicemail for me this afternoon while I was in a meeting. Knowing mom was moving today, I went ahead and listened as the others in the room talked. They had called earlier in the week wanting to know how to start the lawnmower, so this call may have been critical, too.
Grant’s message was slow and carefully spoken:
THE PIGEON HAS FLOWN THE COOP. (Repeat.)
THE PIGEON HAS FLOWN THE COOP.
Secret code! I repeated the message so those in the room could hear the secret message. Heather immediately asked, “Did he find your knife?” That cracked me up. No one else understood, so I had to explain.
I left my red pocket knife hidden at the airport a few weeks ago on the way to a management meeting in Orlando. (This is about the fourth or fifth time I’ve forgotten to leave the knife in my car, so I hide it.) Mom and Carol were driving back to Atlanta from Lakeland and called me at the Orlando meeting to find out if I wanted to drive up with them on Saturday instead of flying back Friday. I said sure, so they picked me up for an overnight stay.
The rest of the managers, including Heather, were flying back that Friday afternoon. I asked her to retrieve my knife. She was nervous about getting arrested. I told her I would have our best lawyers take care of her if anything happened. (I also explained it is not illegal to have a knife in the airport. You just can’t take it past security.)
I was worried about the knife, because the great hiding place I’ve usually used was not available. Under renovation. So I quickly found a spot that was not very good. I drew Heather a map to the hiding place near baggage claim and asked her to call me if she found it. Since she was nervous about the whole thing, I told her to just call me and leave me a secret message. “RED IS OK” or “RED IS GONE.”
She told this story to our president as they went through the airport. He couldn’t believe I was making her “retrieve a weapon,” just adding to the tension (and fun.)
So that’s why Heather responded to Grant’s secret message.
And then I had to also explain that “THE PIGEON” was my mom, and that my brother was helping her move today. So mom’s in Athens. Big day!
P.S.
Heather called me a from the airport a few weeks ago and, alas, said “RED IS GONE.” Hearing this story, Ted gave me a new pocket knife.
Thanks Ted! Thanks for trying Heather!
Need to find a new hiding place.
Brown Bag Marketing is an Atlanta marketing agency run by a group of zany creative types who sent out a very creative, interactive holiday card this season. It created quite the buzz at work for those lucky enough to be found on their mail list. (Turns out intern Danny helped post the associated educational video.)
When I saw the card, the name “cootie catcher” came to mind because this is the folded paper toy my dad would create when we were kids. If you search the web for cootie catcher, what you will find is many elaborate variations of decorative “fortune tellers.” Many call them cootie catchers, but it is very hard to find out why. It goes back to the much more simple but much more magical toy my dad made.
My dad’s trick was to show you an empty cootie catcher in his hand, use it to pick all over your hair, shoulders, and arms, and then show you it was filled with cooties. They looked like little spiders to me. Now I realize this is all a joke about having lice or fleas and probably dates back to a time of the black plague. He would tell you to blow them away, quickly switching back to the empty catcher. (I’ve got to make a video of this….)
Brown Bag’s holiday card was in the vain of the much more colorful and decorate fortune tellers. (Can you tell this is a girl vs. boy thing.) In this case, you choose a word — Bag, Brown, Peace, Love — and sequence the fortune teller for the number of letters in the word. Then you pick a number, sequence that number, and finally pick a number, fold open that flap, and reveal your fortune hidden under the number.
In our household there was a debate about the Brown Bag Snowman….
When trying to follow the instructions for the game, we wondered if you were allowed to pick the snowman instead of a number. Would that be cheating? We did see a very nice fortune under the snowman. We wondered what Brown Bag Marketing was up to with this design.
Not until I scanned in the fortune teller, did I see the numbers as a series like a clock. Of course! The bag-snowman is the number 8! Mystery solved.
So a little confusion for we simple minded clients, but not nearly the confusion the Brown Bag Bomb Box created in New York City. More on that in my next post….
Great job Brown Baggers! Thanks for the card!!!!
Called home on my drive back from work and Danny answered. He had a long day at his new job. He was tired and his feet hurt. He wasn’t used to being on his feet all day. He said that he mainly set up the weapon section and the pimp section.
(Can you guess his new job?)
This photo just came in over the wire. Santa was spotted in Athens trying to steer people into a nearby UPS. (Santa’s older sister got him a job over the holidays. She is even letting him stay in her house. Santa has a nice sister.)
The girls helped me move into my new office earlier in the year. They decorated the office with among other things, some white board art. I kept it up as long as I could, then took this snapshot when I needed to use it myself. Shades of the pending merger can be seen among the girls’ art and check ideas. Smerd makes an appearance.
Our company is promoting our MLK Day activities coming up via a website. Kelly & Claire showed up in this flash animation…
I took a couple days off work to coincide with the girls’ four day weekend. The girls and I went to Harland to have lunch, and they both helped with a yo-yo project. I brought a paint brush and smock so that Kelly could pose in front of the photo of Claire on the wall. Isn’t Kelly a good sport?
“Who is Jim Brown?” Kelly asked while she was doing homework at the kitchen table. She was working on topographical maps. She needed to create a diagonal line across the middle of the island she had drawn to create a profile.
“Do you mean James Brown?” I asked, thinking she meant the singer.
“No, Jim Brown,” she said. “It is carved in this metal ruler.”
I looked at the ruler, and realized it was the ruler that was in the desk drawer when I started at Harland in 1987. Jim Brown had left the company, creating a vacancy that I filled. It wasn’t really Jim Brown’s ruler, but rather Harland’s ruler that Jim Brown used. In one of my office moves, the metal ruler ended up at home. We don’t use rulers anymore, since most design occurs on a screen. And we never draw topographical maps with pencil and graph paper. I’m sure Kelly will never have a job that requires her to do that, but at least she will understand the concept. And Jim Brown’s ruler helped.
Thanks Jim (whom I never met), wherever you are….
Oh… I also ran into ex-Harlander and leader Earl Rogers at work today, which triggered a whole set of memories. Earl was very influential in my career. Also ran into still-Harlander Ralph Crane… who also ran into Earl. Something of a nostalgia day at Harland.
With a clear goal of getting his driver’s license (and paying half of the insurance) Danny found work at Bruster’s on Sugarloaf. (Great highway name for an ice cream shop. Thanks to Lexi for the referral!) One of the most surprising things he has learned is how the regulars not only come for ice cream every day, but sometimes they come twice in one evening! For us Bruster’s has always been reserved for special celebrations of achievement by the kids. I’d just as soon keep it that way.
