Christmas Memories
As I start this commentary, AMC is playing "Prancer", a movie about a young girl who becomes convinced an injured reindeer she encounters is one of Santa Claus' infamous reindeer and she is determined to nurse him back to health. One of the reasons I like the movie is a bonding memory with my late Dad. The young protagonist in the movie has a particularly loud, off-key singing voice (you have to be talented to be so bad), and hearing her would drive my Dad nuts. I found Dad's reaction hysterically funny. In part, Dad had hearing aids (he spent years as a USAF jet mechanic and the years on working near the flightlines took their toll) that never seemed at work well; he could barely hear me over the phone with various squeals from his aids and he would invariably hand the phone over to my Mom.I thought Dad's annoyance was hilarious; I would tease him about getting a VHS or DVD of the film as a Christmas gift. Maybe it was part of getting older. I remember he once accused me of stirring up some excitement with my two oldest nephews; I mean my Dad had 7 kids, and noise came with the territory; I didn't remember him rebuking us similarly; of course, by then most of us had left the nest, so maybe he had become accustomed to the quiet.
I have some weird memories associated with certain movies. I don't think I ever saw or heard of "It's a Wonderful Life" until the early 1980's. I had been working in the APL timesharing industry. APL is an interpretive (vs. compiled) programming language which had been introduced by IBM in the 1960's; it was cryptic, concise, heavily mathematically notated, and idiosyncratic (it reads from right to left); as a southpaw with 2 math degrees, I took to it like a duck to water. Unlike everyone else involved with APL, I was obsessed with documentation (the inspiration for my eventual dissertation), which generally didn't exist in production environments. It wasn't for my benefit, but I didn't want to spend the rest of my career as a maintenance guru fixing other people's crappy code. For me to advance, I had to leave code much more manageable than I found it.
In this case, I was working with a newly married couple. what I remember most about the petite wife is that she (let's call her Janice) was a coxswain (rowing team, the "quarterback" seated at the stern, not one of the (often 6-foot) rowers) with Olympic ambitions. The guy (let's call him "Clark") was one of those guys who had basically worked his way up from the mail room types, and the company had basically decided to market a project he had been working on, called CASHFAST, a product designed around facilitating real estate cashflow analysis. Clark had sort of a love/hate relationship servicing the product; it had grown past his ability to do it on his own, but he had never worked in a team concept and had a hard time letting go of the project (not to mention his sense of job security). I was the guy who was given the undesirable task of debriefing Clark.) So I was in a conference room, trying to interview Clark, and it was like pulling teeth dealing with Clark's bipolar, manic depressive attitude on CASHFAST: at times, he was sick and tired of dealing with the pressure of maintaining CASHFAST and wanted to be relieved of the responsibility, while on the other hand, it was his baby and he was concerned of his own role and influence after the transition.
What would invariably happen during these debrief sessions is that just as I was making progress in the debrief, Janice would call Clark in the conference room to discuss their plans for the evening after work, etc. Once that happened, it was impossible to get Clark back on track.
So I finally went to my boss and said, "You have got to stop Joyce from calling into the room because I can't make progress with Clark with all the interruptions." Now managers in my experience apparently all take a course in Bonehead 101; you have to deal with the situation with subtlety. The next thing I know both Clark and Janice are giving me the silent treatment for 3 weeks.
Clark was a sentimental guy; I think I have a Howdy Doody face, and people often will tell me things I would never think to bring up personally in a conversation. Like, "Ron, would you believe Janice is the first and only woman I've ever slept with?" No kidding: Clark is the kind of guy you would vote "Most Likely To Remain a Virgin". And he was obsessed with "It's a Wonderful Life".
I don't recall when I finally saw "It's a Wonderful Life" for the first time (probably within 2-3 years later), but I remember when I first heard about it. There are parts of the story that still bother me. (SPOILER ALERT!) As every viewer know, the incident which triggers George Bailey's meltdown is when Uncle Billy goes to the bank to make an S&L deposit, and sees his family's nemesis Potter in the bank with his newspaper. (I think it may have covered George's younger brother Harry, who was awarded a Congressional Medal of Honor for saving a troop transport from Nazi attack.) In the process, he picks up Potter's paper to boast about his two nephews, later unknowingly returning the newspaper folded around his intended deposit.
Oh, I'm sure in Potter's mind, he didn't steal the S&L deposit; he didn't force Uncle Billy to hand over his deposit. What's more astonishing is that when Uncle Billy first realizes he doesn't have the deposit when he goes to the teller's window, he doesn't seem to recall his encounter with Potter.
So, the movie wouldn't be the same without all his family, friends, and customers coming out of the woodwork to replace the stolen deposit. Of course, Potter's intent to end the S&L under scandal is foiled. there's a part of me that would have liked to see Potter pay a price for stealing the deposit.
Weird Dreams
I had another one, this type involving an MBA scenario. In this case, the business of a flamboyant black florist/entrepreneur based out of Baltimore is failing. (I don't know any black florist and none of the characters seem familiar.) It turns out the florist's son is in the class and is appointed project lead by the professor.The son is seated at the head of the table and I sit down in the first chair to his right. He then turns to me and asks me what to do. And I stammer that I don't know enough about salient facts: is this case a situation of not being able to control costs? Of unsustainable debt? Of not responding to a changing marketplace and competitor strategies?
The florist's son interrupts me: "You're wasting my time." He then turns to the woman across the table and says, "Do you have anything constructive to say, unlike Ron, who isn't up to the task?"
When I respond, he turns to me to say, "You're done. Go away."
I'm not a psychologist, Maybe it's a metaphor for living in a world where my political opinions and other thoughts are abruptly dismissed, even by my own family and friends.
