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Every New York television station you turned to had the same bold graphic, "Blizzard of '96." I still remember it. It was barely 1996; we were only six days into the new year when anywhere between 20-30 inches of snow unloaded on the Metropolitan New York area. It was like a mega-ton snow bomb hit the area, and it literally drove the Big Apple to its knees.
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We were trying to teach some young leaders the importance of teamwork. One of the exercises I used was to have them put together a puzzle. (I thought it was a bright idea.) You tear off a page of a magazine, tear it into pieces, dump it into the middle of each small group, and see who could put their pictures together first. It didn't work too well. See, I forgot one little thing. I forgot to give them a copy of the complete picture so they could see what it should look like when it was all together. Duh! Now, I've tried to work on one of those big, many-pieces puzzles myself, and I've had the same frustration because I didn't know where the top of the puzzle box was. It was really hard to put the pieces together when the complete picture wasn't there.
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When I was in junior high school, we usually bought one copy of the local newspaper every day. Until the day I won the County Spelling Bee! Yeah, I can do autographs later. I'm sure you're very impressed. Well, that day my parents bought about 20 copies of the local newspaper. What was the difference? Well, my name was in it this time!
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I was at my friend Dave's house, meeting with a group of teenagers, and it happened. We had been eating together out on his porch when the sky suddenly turned really nasty. We hustled inside, just before the skies started dumping rain and thunder and lightning - big time thunder and lightning we're talking here. I wanted to continue our conversation under the dining room table, but no one wanted to join me there, so we went to the living room.
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I really hate it when a five-year-old makes me feel dumb, especially when it's my grandson. I mean, he didn't mean to make me feel dumb. He didn't know he was making me feel dumb. But he is really smart, and he knew a lot about a lot! Like the solar system. He had the planets down cold along with all kinds of facts about the universe. Things I either have forgotten or never knew. Another thing our grandson was really mastering was numbers. Man, could he count! He was working on thousands, millions, billions, and his favorite quantity, a google! When it comes to our universe, he was never going to be able to count that high!
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Boom! Suddenly all the lights went out in the conference center where we were staying, just as we were all making our way out of our rooms and down this long hallway to breakfast. No windows. The hallway was longer than usual that morning because it was totally dark. Turns out the entire region experienced a power failure that morning. Because a squirrel got into a relay station and gnawed through a cable. That's fried squirrel and lights out.
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Well, several years ago it was our turn again for the cicadas to pay us a brief visit. You can't really complain; they only drop by every 17 years. What a life these critters have! They suck on a root in the ground for a while, they finally emerge, they climb a tree, they make a lot of noise for about three weeks, and they die. You talk about "get a life!"
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This could surely come under the heading of "You know it's going to be a bad day when..." Yeah, my wife and I were stopped at a stop light during the rush hour one morning. We were on a local street that intersects the busiest highway in the area in that town. There were two lanes. We were in the left one - the left turn lane. The light turned green, I started turning left. Well, I noticed another car next to me on my right turning from the right lane. Well that's not allowed. You're not supposed to do that; it's illegal, and it's very dangerous at this intersection. Well, suddenly, I guess this guy saw in his rearview mirror - this blinking light behind him. He had just made that illegal turn right in front of a police officer. Needless to say, he was pulled over on the shoulder before he even cleared the intersection. I mean he's not even out of the neighborhood yet and he's been caught.
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Governors' desks were vacant. Senators' offices were empty. They might as well have just put a sign on the door - "Gone to Iowa." Yep! It was the election season of 2016. We've been through another one recently but I'm thinking about that one. It had been the time when everyone goes to New Hampshire and South Carolina and on and on in the wild and crazy year when so many people were wanting to be president.
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The love of Mary Ann's life, Tom, was coming for a visit. He lived in another state, so those visits were really special. He was due to arrive Friday night or Saturday sometime, and Mary Ann's room had been declared a federal disaster area. Finally, on Thursday afternoon, she decided she'd better get busy trying to recover her room. It was really in an embarrassing condition.
