Brush With Greatness

Yesterday afternoon while I was at work the phone rang and when I answered I got a beep. I’ve gotten fax calls before and if you don’t do something about them, the fax will just keep calling, so I quickly transferred the call to our fax machine. A minute or two later I went to see if it worked and found a letter to the Georgia Secretary of State. The letter was from the CFO of a hair products company in Norcross, Bernard King, and had a contact number, so I called him. Mr. King wasn’t in, but once I explained the situation I was told he would call me right back.

A few minutes later, I got a call from the guy. He already knew what was going on basically and was very appreciative that I had called him back to let him know the fax hadn’t gotten where it needed to go. I said it was no problem and I was glad to help out. A minute later the phone rang again and Mr. King said he thought he had forgotten to thank me for all the trouble I had saved him. I said I thought he did thank me and again it was no problem. He said that’s what he loved about being in Atlanta, nobody in New York would have ever followed up on a lost fax. Then he said goodbye again.

A minute later he called again (!). He said again that he appreciated my help and he wanted to send me an autographed basketball card. Kind of perplexed, I said “Okay . . .” not even sure what he was talking about. I thought he was either going to give me a basketball or send a basketball-related greeting card. He said You know I played in the NBA. I said I didn’t know that. He said he was in the NBA for 12 years (or something) and played for the New Jersey Nets, New York Knicks, and Washington Bullets. He said he was an all-star three years and that he scored more points than Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, and all of those guys. I said, wow, that’s great! He said he was very proud of that and I said, well, you should be. I could tell he had given his career summary a lot of times before. He said he would mail me his card and I could give it to anyone I wanted (I guess since I had never heard of him, he didn’t think I would have any use for his basketball card).

I looked him up on the internet immediately of course and everything he said was true. He led the league in scoring in the 84-85 season. That was Michael Jordan’s rookie season, but Jordan would go on to be the leading scorer in 10 of the next 13 seasons.

You should always be nice to strangers because you never know when the stranger might be Jesus. But sometimes the stranger will be a former NBA All Star.

I’ll post a picture of the card when I get it.