Installment # 55

I have a hunch that people did not clue me in on some things because they thought I probably understood, but just didn’t care.  Things that were obvious to most people were not necessarily obvious to me.  I had probably been married over 40 years before I started to understand what an engagement ring meant to a woman.  As I see it now, a beautiful, expensive engagement ring is something that a woman will treasure all her life.  It will be admired by her friends, maybe envied by some acquaintances she makes during her life; and maybe handed down to a daughter or granddaughter.  If the marriage is a good one, which ours has been (that’s an understatement!), then the beautiful ring will be an almost constant reminder that she is loved and valued, and will bring her happiness all the while.

So of course, at 21 years of age, when we were picking out engagement rings, my only goal was to spend as little money as possible to get her something that she would accept.  Over the years, as we upgraded the rings, I continued more or less with that same approach, having not a clue as to why a woman would need to waste good money on “such nonsense.”  But I would go along, because I loved her and wanted to make her happy.  When the light bulb finally went on in my pea brain (“light dawns over marblehead”), I did not rush out and try to make up for lost time, but I was (and am) humbled by the fact that Sandy had been able to place more importance on our relationship than on the pride and joy she was missing.

My thinking was quite similar regarding the cars I drove.  My first new car was a 1965 VW Bug, and I drove it for 12 years.  My goal was to “get from point A to point B” as economically and efficiently as possible.  I could not imagine why someone would pay more than necessary for a car that got worse gas mileage.  You may recall that the VW Bug had the engine in the back and the trunk in the front.  We used to load up the 3 kids, stick the port-a-crib in the front, tie the trunk down and go off to visit relatives (no seat belts in those days).  The Bug looked like a mouse going down the street with a large piece of cheese sticking out both sides of its mouth.  Uncle Phil commented several times that he would never risk his family’s lives like that.  I thought he was just being one of those macho truck driver types – paid no attention.

I have just never been into cars or, for that matter, the speed or noise or prestige or performance characteristics of what people drive.  It was only a few years ago that I learned that BMW is not a British-made car.  I thought it stood for British Motor Works; turns out it stands for Bavarian Motor Works.  Who knew?  Who cares, really?  We have lived in this court in San Jose since 1975, and the neighbors have come and gone over the years, of course, but I cannot spot a neighbor’s car at a glance.  I may know that they have a small white car or a mid-sized black SUV, but looking out the window, I don’t know if I am looking at their car or if they have a visitor, or if one of the other neighbors has parked in front of their house for some reason.  The cars look pretty much alike to me.

I’m more likely to remember bumper stickers and personalized license plate numbers than the make, model and year of a car that I drive past every day.  As a teenager, Bobby would hear a vehicle going by on Redmond, the next block over, and say, “There goes so-and-so.”  He knew just about everything about his friends’ cars, including what they sounded like a few blocks away.  He did the same with motorcycles, of course.  He knew a lot about the bike without seeing it – just hearing it.

I was so logical that when I bought the VW the dealer said that a radio was optional for something like $75.  Well, I heard that I could go down to one of the auto parts stores and buy one for maybe $30-35 and install it myself.  I wasn’t going to finance $75 when I could pay $30-35 in cash maybe next payday.  Long story short, I had no idea how to install a radio, never went and bought one, and drove that car for 12 years without a radio.  Many years later I realized that I had a 12-year gap in my knowledge of music.  I missed that whole genre from the Beatles to the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Jefferson Airplane, The Doors, Aerosmith, Bruce Springsteen, etc.

One of the first trips I made in the brand new1965 VW was with Sandy to Ed and Lynn Goldblum’s wedding up in Weaverville, a small town in the Mt. Shasta area.  As dusk fell, I reached over and tugged on the knob for the headlights, or I thought I did.  As it got darker I was finding it harder and harder to see.  The people in the car behind us were friends of ours going to the same wedding, and for a while I could see ahead to some extent by virtue of their headlights.  We both finally pulled over, and I had to ask whether it looked like my headlights were not working, or were just weak, or what.  He calmly explained that I only had the “running lights” on – I think that’s what he called them – and he showed me how to turn on the actual headlights.  Boy, did I feel dumb, especially in front of Sandy.

On another trip, returning from Lake Tahoe, it was really hot inside the car, even though I had the heater turned off.  The dash board felt hot to the touch, and I was really concerned that maybe the engine was overheating, or there was no water in the radiator, or something.  I kept driving, expecting at any moment that the engine would crack or the car would burst into flames or something.  As soon as I could, I took the car back to the dealer that I bought it from.  I described the conditions, and he said, “You mean the heater is stuck on?”  I looked at him dumbfounded and squeaked, “Is that all it is?”  It was a very simple fix, and they didn’t even charge me, instead apologizing and thanking me for coming in and being so understanding.

I used to think that people with fancy cars had self-image or ego issues and just needed to try to impress people.  I used to snicker, “If you want to feel like a ‘sport’, or want people to think you are a ‘sport’, just drive a car that includes the work ‘sport’ in the model name.  You don’t need to actually be a sport.” Or, what about those model numbers in large characters, where L supposedly stands for Luxury, or E implies Extra or Extended or something?  I confess, though, that in recent years I find myself watching a cheap or banged up car going down the road, and drawing negative conclusions about the driver/owner.  Now I understand pride of ownership, self-respect, the desire to provide as much luxury or at least as much comfort for your wife as you can.  Surely people with common sense “get” this stuff early on and make better life decisions.

I was always very slow to adopt new technology.  We were no doubt the last house in the neighborhood to get a color television.  My thought process?  Black and white is good enough – we can see what the performers are doing and hear what they are saying.  We don’t need color.  Fast forwarding 30-40 years, we bought a new TV at a time when the high-density (HD) technology was less than 18 months away and networks were announcing which of their programs would be available in the new HD.  For an additional amount, we could opt for a TV that would handle HD as it became available.  My thought process?  We both wear glasses.  We can’t see well enough for it to make a difference, anyway.  Why waste money on some new-fangled feature that we don’t need?

Same thing when TV remote controllers came out.  I thought, “Have we become so lazy and spoiled in this society that we can’t get up and turn the channel?  Can’t get up and adjust the volume?  What is this world coming to?”  Same thing with automatic garage door openers.  Except for very rare (in California) and extreme weather conditions, who in the world needs to be able to open the garage door remotely and drive in?  Are you kidding me?  And what if the remote doesn’t work one time, after you have given up your ability to open it manually?  I remember one of the first times I encountered an automatic garage door opener.  We were entering Norm and Pam’s house from the garage.  I was the last one in, so Norm asked me to close the garage door.  I stepped back out into the garage and looked around, saw a rope hanging down with a knot at the end, shrugged and pulled.  It turned out to be something Norm had set up to help him stop at the correct distance from the wall.  When the knot touched the windshield, he knew to stop.  Well, it needed to be put back up after I yanked it down.  He of course enlightened me as to where the large button was to activate the garage door.

The first garage door openers were huge, clunky things that made a lot of noise, which was reason enough for me to prefer the good old fashioned manual method.  If the early versions had reliable electronic sensors that would prevent me from closing the door on a child, or a child’s finger, or keep me from breaking some valuable object that was misplaced, or help me avoid wrecking the door on some heavy object that was in the way, I was not aware of it.  So I was very wary of, and not a fan of, the first automatic garage door openers.  I suppose I also didn’t consider that the door may not be heavy for me to open manually, but what about Sandy?

As a quick aside, Amy was around two years old when we returned late one night from a trip with our neighbors, the Wilks, in their camper.  Al parked in his driveway and we all staggered out of the vehicle (4 adults and 5 kids just waking up after a 5-6 hour drive).  One of the springs on Al’s manually-operated garage door had broken, so it tended to be raised with more effort than normal and come down faster than was probably safe.  Well, Al had the door open and Amy was standing right under it when the other spring broke and that big, heavy wooden door came flying down.  Al happened to be close enough and alert enough to react in a split second and get his body between the door and Amy.  He had a very sore and bruised back the next day, but it would have killed Amy for sure if it had come down on her.  Al had caught it maybe 5 feet from the ground.  Amy’s little body was maybe 2 feet from the ground.  The force would simply have crushed her to death.  Along with my “attitude of gratitude” about my own life, approaching 70 with excellent prospects for continued health, past 47 years of a wonderful marriage, I rejoice that our 3 kids have made it to adulthood and parenthood safe and whole!

But to return to my attitude toward modern conveniences, I am fairly certain that if I had been a young adult when the automobile was being introduced, I would have argued that we didn’t need such a thing.  It was too impractical; there were hardly any roads.  If you recall stories about the earliest automobiles, you had to use a hand crank out in front of the car to get it started; you had to play with the choke, etc.  It was too cold and windy to drive; only the rich could afford them; you needed to be a mechanic, or be able to afford one, and on-and-on.  By the way, ever notice that the one thing you are perhaps least likely to find in the glove box of a car these days is a pair of gloves?  Before windshields and heaters, the driver had to wear gloves to keep his hands from freezing.  I think I would have preferred to be inside a cozy horse-drawn stage coach or something.

For many years the used car ads would include “R&H” or “R/H” meaning radio and heater.  At some point, of course, we all knew we could take for granted that a used car had a radio and heater.  Air conditioning took longer to become standard on new cars, let alone common on used cars.  I was leery of air conditioning at first.  The early units were heavy, so reduced gas mileage, and were not very easy to adjust.  They were optional, so cost an additional $300-$400 at the time.  I calculated that if I use it a few time each summer, and only kept the car 3-4 years, it was costing me around $100 per year, plus the reduced gas mileage.  I would rather just drive with the windows down on a hot day than have ice cold air blowing on me.  I would rather be outdoors in a light t-shirt, then sit in someone’s car and “freeze to death.”  Now, of course, air conditioners are much more user-friendly. 

When power brakes, power steering and power windows and door locks came in, I was right there with “How lazy can you get?” and “It is just more things that can go wrong that you can’t fix yourself.”  Of course, I couldn’t fix anything myself, but maybe I could find a friend or neighbor who would help me, but not with this new-fangled power stuff.  As a strong, agile young man, I had no problem with manual brakes and steering, and no qualms about walking around the car and rolling up the windows and locking the doors by hand.  It is a good thing the auto makers were thinking of people who were not necessarily strong or agile – or young or male, for that matter.

But speaking of heaters, these days the interior of a car warms up quite quickly.  It wasn’t always so.  We used to wait and not turn the heater on until we had been driving for at least 5 minutes, during which time we were very cold and uncomfortable.  Turning the heater on too soon would just blast cold air on us and make it worse.  Finally, when it seemed time, we would turn the heater on.  There were some classic arguments, with the wife yelling, “Turn the heater on!” and the husband yelling, “We need to wait until the engine warms up first!”

Now in the colder climates people can use their remote devices to start the car from indoors and let it idle for a few minutes before getting in.  In fact, at this point, based on the commercials and some cars I’ve seen, it looks like if a person got all of the available features on their automobile, including all the great hands free, verbal activation sound and communication devices, navigation and driver assist devices, etc, driving a car would feel like sitting in the captain’s chair of the Starship Enterprise or something.  It will be interesting to see how the auto insurance industry adjusts to so much hands-free automation.  Where do the manufacturer’s responsibilities end and the driver’s responsibilities begin?

Before the invasion of automobiles from Japan, American-made cars seemed to be designed to “fall apart” by the time the owner finished paying for it.  We called it “planned obsolescence.”  And in those days, most car loans were for three years.  We slowly crept up to five and seven years as the purchase prices climbed.  But with competition, mainly from Japan, American automakers were forced to design and produce higher quality cars that got better gas mileage and were built to last at least for the five or seven years that it took the average owner to pay off the loan.  It used to be that if a General Motors car had over 100,000 miles on it, it was ready to fall apart.  Now a 200,000 to 300,000 mile life is not unusual.

By the way, I took and passed my driver’s test at age 16 using Mom’s VW, with its stick shift and four forward gears. American-made cars had three forward gears, and they were more in front of you, where you could see what you were doing.  The VW stick shift was on the driver’s right and down below his field of vision.  It certainly took some getting used to.  Automatic transmissions had come in by then, but were still in the minority.  I think the authorities administering the tests were still frowning upon people taking the tests using automatic transmissions, because stick shifts were so much more prevalent.  If you could pass the test on a stick shift, you could surely drive an automatic; but it was not so clear the other way around.

Young people might be interested to know that the “distracted driver” rules were unheard of just a few years ago.  When cell phones first came out, there were no rules about using them while driving, even after the advent of texting.  People put bumper stickers on their cars saying things like, “Hang up and drive,” and “Don’t text and drive,” similar to the reminders about drinking and driving.  I remember when Ezra was about 3 years old he was sitting in the driver’s seat of one of the cars parked in the driveway.  As he pretended to drive, his right hand came up to his ear, and it was obvious that he was imitating the motion he saw his mother or father make when they were driving.  As far as he knew from observation, that was part of driving a car.  California finally introduced the “hands free” requirement, where you could still carry on a conversation with someone over the phone, as long as you were using a device that permitted you to keep your hands on the steering wheel and your eyes on the road.  The penalty for being cited for texting or holding a phone to your ear while driving was (and is) rather paltry and not much of a deterrent, but most of us recognize that this is a good, common sense rule – same as seat belts.  Once I got in the habit of putting my seat belt on, I felt uncomfortable not having it on.  

California also passed a rule recently about turning your headlights on any time you are driving under conditions that cause you to use your windshield wipers.  I do this faithfully, because I think it is a good rule.

Canada, or at least the Province of Alberta, where Michelle lives, has a stricter “distracted driver” law that allows an officer to cite a driver if, in the officer’s opinion, the driver was distracted for any reason, such as reaching back to swat a child or grab a bottle of water or something.  This perhaps goes too far: I think we all know we need to “be careful” while driving.  Canada also lowered the blood alcohol threshold for legal impairment such that a driver is almost forced to abstain completely when planning to operate a motor vehicle.  We are again balancing personal liberty with the greater good, and each of us has a sense of where the line is and when it has been crossed.

Installment # 54

One would think that a corollary of a lack of common sense would be a lack of confidence.  For years, however, I was fond of saying that I had a strong self-image, but that it just wasn’t very accurate.  I would plunge ahead confidently with almost any task, blissfully unaware that I lacked the ability to succeed.  Afterward I would say to myself, “I guess that is not an area I can succeed in.  Not sure why.  I’ll try something else.”  I spent about ten years trying to build a legal, legitimate multi-level marketing business, where the more you help other people succeed, the more you succeed.  Despite a great training and support system, I just could not change, grow and become the person I needed to become in order to succeed.  That ten year period came between ages 42 and 52 (1986 to 1996), by the way, during which time I was a full-time consultant/contractor and putting our daughters through college.   I did give up marathon racing in 1986, but continued to do long distance training runs during those years, and many years thereafter.  The point is that the energy level and drive I showed during my own college days was still there.

Early in the multi-level marketing training process, I heard and continued to hear speakers say, “If I can do it, you can do it.”  I believed them, because I wanted to believe them.  There were so many speakers saying the same thing, I felt that logically either they were all lying, or it was true, and I couldn’t believe they were all lying.  There was also the possibility that they all believed what they were saying, but they were all wrong.  That didn’t seem likely, either.  The common sense alternative that I finally came to about five years after I gave up, is that what they were saying was theoretically true, but not as a practical matter, akin to saying that anyone born in America can someday be President. 

I would combine this with the possibility that if someone has an aptitude for something; if something comes easy for someone; they may not realize that it is not easy, or even possible, for most others.  I know now that the intangible personal characteristics that it takes to attract, inspire and lead a group of high-energy, overachievers (what we used to call “winners”) are rare qualities.  The fact that someone else has these characteristics, or has acquired them, does not mean that the average person can do so, just because he wants to.

The guy with the largest organization could say things that most people might find offensive, but for those of us who wanted his success, his words were received as challenges that served as “jet fuel in our engines”, so to speak.  He would say from stage, speaking to thousands of attendees: “If I make in a week what you make in a year, one of us is stupid, and it’s not me!”  Or how about: “I don’t want to know anything that a broke person knows; it might be catching.”  We were all trying to “go Direct,” which meant sponsoring at least six “winners” and creating and sustaining a certain level of business volume within our groups.  He would motivate us with things like “Even a blind squirrel will find a nut once in awhile.” “A dog with a note in his mouth can go Direct.”  “Hell, I could probably find six people to blow up the white house…at their own expense!”  “You are going to need six pall bearers at your funeral; you better have at least six friends!”  People who wouldn’t get involved in the business or who did nothing with it, or who quit, he called “Losers.”  He said, “When someone tells me they quit, I say quit what?  You ain’t been doing nuthin to quit from.”  All these sayings served as motivation to those of us who saw ourselves as “winners.”

One guy said, “I figured nobody was twice as good as me.  It might take me twice as long to do half of what they did, but surely I could do it, if they could.”  That is where my self-image was at, too.  But try as I might, I could not attract people who were both willing and able to build multi-level marketing businesses down line from me. The business made such logical sense to me that I couldn’t see why anyone would not be motivated enough to get out of their comfort zones, go the extra mile, and make it happen.  I learned the hard way that people are not all like me.  I am a very cooperative person.  If a friend is a chiropractor or barber or whatever, I am happy to give them my business.  If the supermarket sign says, “please return carts here,” I am happy to do it.  Imagine my surprise when “friends” started making up flimsy excuses to not get involved in my business.  I never expected that and still don’t understand it.

To be fair, one of the speakers was fond of saying, “Who you are speaks so loud that what you say I cannot hear.”  There was also reference to “the music behind the words,” which sort of means the same thing.  But I guess I thought I could and would change and become the person I needed to be in order to succeed.  After ten years of honest effort, however, I began to doubt.  My corollary to “If I can do it, you can do it” became “Just because I can’t do it doesn’t mean that you can’t do it!”  Of course, someone who really can do it is going to recognize and steer clear of someone who cannot.  Sandy and I actually got to the level where we were asked to speak for 5-10 minutes, from stage, with microphones, to several thousand people.  By that time I was accustomed to being on my feet before small groups making presentations, so this was not a real stretch for me, but I marveled at Sandy.  She handled it with ease, grace and good humor.

I remember that all of the couples who were scheduled to speak that weekend met with our Diamond, and some of the people seemed really scared and nervous.  This may be what prompted our Diamond to tell us that if public speaking “breaks you,” it will “make you,” but if it “makes you,” it will “break you.”  What he meant was that if you get a big charge out of being up there getting the attention, and it makes you feel like a big shot, you will not relate to people, and they will not follow you.  But if you stammer and stutter and embarrass yourself up there, you will win people’s hearts, and they will want to follow you.  That sounded so contrary, I thought it must be very wise.  But it didn’t change the fact that I enjoyed speaking from stage.  A similar “wise” saying I heard was to the effect that, “Your greatest strength will become your greatest weakness, and your greatest weakness will become your greatest strength.”  Again, it is all about being relatable.  Unfortunately, by the time I had heard that I had burned through a lot of prospects trying to use my credibility, instead.

I had never been part of a sales organization before.  A lot of statements that sounded incredibly wise and helpful to me were really old ideas, sometimes modified for our particular goals.  For example, being materialistic was to “love things and use people.”  Our great leaders encouraged us to follow their example: “Use things and love people.”  Also, being materialistic was to “spend money you don’t have to buy things you don’t need to impress people you don’t like.”  We were taught to get out of debt and stay out of debt.  Then there was, “If you always do what you have always done, you will always get what you have always gotten.”  “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.” “A rut is just a grave with the ends knocked out.”  Then there is the “law of sewing and reaping” and the “law of compensation,” both of which are fairly self-explanatory.  I won’t get into them here.  Also, the Napoleon Hill quote: “What the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve.”  That was a deceptively compelling idea until you realized what it means to really believe something.  Hoping, praying and positive thinking don’t cut it. In the end, then, if you are not succeeding, you don’t really believe strongly enough, and therefore it is your own fault.

I really liked the idea: We know more or less how many seeds there are in an apple, but…how many apples are there in a seed?  In multi-level marketing you were going about spreading or sprinkling seeds, knowing that some of them were going to take root and eventually create whole orchards of trees, with hundreds of apples and thousands of seeds to perpetuate the process. One of my favorite concepts had to do with considering a scale of 1 to 10, where a really sharp, motivated, charismatic, high-energy person who could succeed at nearly anything (a “winner”) would be a 10, and of course the further away a person was from that description, the closer to zero on this scale.  The speaker went on to say that each of us sees ourselves (our self-image) a little lower than what is accurate, and we tend to see other people a little higher than would be accurate.  As an exaggerated example, if I am really an 8, I may see myself as a 6, but a prospect may see me as a 10.  The prospect may really be a 4 and see himself as a 2, but I see him as a 6.  So I am really comfortable sponsoring him, because I see him and myself as 6s.

What I needed to do under this concept was approach people who I saw as 10s, because they are really 8s, and so am I, though I feel like a 6.  The kicker is that, unless we really fight against it, we will always sponsor “down,” and the people we sponsor will do the same, so that 8s will sponsor 6s, 6s will sponsor 4s, 4s will sponsor 2s, and you end up with “the slugs of the earth” (the speaker’s terminology) populating your business.   Not being one to back down from a challenge, I went ahead and approached successful business leaders and professionals (doctors, lawyers, etc.) with predictably dismal results.  In the absence of common sense, I had that strong, but inaccurate self-image that had me preparing, as noted, to be a CFO of a publicly-traded company; to be a platoon leader at a “young” 17-18 years of age and, come to think of it, a husband at age 22 and homeowner and father of three while doing low-paying blue collar work.  I didn’t know what I was doing, but I didn’t know that I didn’t know what I was doing!

After ten years of futility I was ready to hear a message by Stephen Covey, author of The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People and other books.  He said that his problem with books like How to Win Friends and Influence People (Dale Carnegie) was that they taught you to act a certain way, rather than to be a certain way; that real and lasting success has to be consistent with who you are.  You cannot maintain an act.  By this time I understood that multi-level marketing is all about maintaining close personal relationships over a long period of time.  Try maintaining an act over a long period of time!  Again, the message I was getting and believing was that I could change, if I tried hard enough.  One speaker said, “If you don’t like the kind of fish you are catching, you need to change the bait.  And guess what…you are the bait.”

There is an axiom in sales that in order to convince others you must first convince yourself; or instead of trying to “sell” others, sell yourself and the rest will follow.  Unfortuntely, it also holds that in order to deceive other people you must first deceive yourself.  One of the first tapes I heard was a talk by a leading financial planner; another had been a CPA with one of the top firms.  As mentioned, I thought to myself: I have that kind of credibility.  I can tell people my background and they will be inclined to believe me and follow me.  Let’s not worry about the logical inconsistencies I was hearing or the legitimate concerns, let’s just sponsor a lot of people using my credibility and then let the support system of tapes and functions take over.

I noted and tried to ignore many almost laughable twists of logic.  There were several bible verses that speakers would take out of context and twist the meaning of in order to justify their points.  For example, “Without vision my people perish…” became the basis for emphasis on the importance of having a “dream,” meaning having goals and desires that are big enough and important enough to motivate you to succeed.  The bible quote becomes the basis for saying, “God says that if you don’t have a dream, you’re going to die!”  In context, the ‘vision’ spoken of in the bible means spiritual insight.  I knew that, but I hoped the people I sponsored wouldn’t catch on.

Another whopper was Jesus’ admonition to “love thy neighbor.”  This led to a discussion of how, as Christians, we could best fulfill that commandment.  It turns out that the best way would be to show him the business opportunity and help him achieve financial freedom.  As one speaker said, “What am I going to do, mow his lawn for him?  I ain’t gonna mow his lawn for him!  If I love him, to be true to my faith, I need to show him the plan.”  (The 2 to 5 year plan to financial freedom).  I could see right through that, but I hoped no one else could.  Along with “If I can do it, you can do it,” was the bible quote to the affect that “God is no respecter of persons.”  In context this meant that salvation was available to all, not just some.  Speakers used it to suggest that if God has allowed me to succeed, there is no reason why He will not help you succeed.

My point is that I worked hard at deceiving myself so that I could deceive others, though I saw it as convincing myself so that I could convince others.  The principle is more correctly put as: “If you would convince others, you must first convince yourself.”  And I am saying that you could substitute the work “deceive” for the word “convince,” and you would get an equally true statement.  It is said that the best, most convincing liars are the ones who, at some basic level, though completely false, actually believe what they are telling you. One of the diamonds said that he was really excited about the fact that he had some 10,000 people in his organization, because statistically 1% of all distributors go diamond.  That meant to him that he should someday have around 100 diamonds in his organization.  What it said to me was that there was about a 1% success rate.  (I also hoped no one else would catch that little fact). Again, building a long-term relationship based on deception does not work, unless you are really good at it.

I wasn’t going to mention the specific name of the multilevel marketing organization we are talking about here, because I am not faulting that organization or anyone in the distributor organization to which I belonged.  The fault was all mine that I was “clueless” enough not to recognize that I was not the type who could maintain close personal relationships over long periods of time based on sets of false premises, however well intentioned.  And I didn’t have the common sense to discern fact from fiction or to handle the myriad of interpersonal issues that inevitably crop up in a business based on personal relationships.  Anyway, I wanted to mention the “A word” and the “J word.”  The first hurdle in approaching a prospect was to get past the point in time when they first heard the word “Amway.” The second was when they heard the word “Jesus.”

Our distributor organization was very bible-based.  If you succeeded in getting a person to one of the major meetings (held approximately quarterly) they were going to get two ears full of bible-based Christianity.  So if you got them past the “A” word, you still had to get them past the “J” word, or they were not going to be around long.  This is a tall order for all but the most charismatic of people (the 1%).  Those who bought into the A word and the J word had to then be charismatic enough to continue the process.  Very, very few people fit that description.  As alluded to elsewhere, very few Christian “believers” have the self-image, motivation and skill set to succeed at something like this.

We were taught that the ideal situation was “me and my wife sitting down with him and his wife” in their home, building a relationship and getting them excited about their financial future.  In my naiveté I did not understand that most people are not proud of their homes or their marriages or their finances, and will make any number of plausible-sounding excuses not to let you see their real selves.  To make matters worse, I often would “show the plan” to the man first and then try to get the plan in front of them as a couple.  Good luck trying to get a man to get his wife to agree to meet with someone or some couple when they don’t know what you are going to be talking about.  So you have to show the man first, then he goes home and tries to tell his wife, and she adamantly refuses to learn more or get involved.  And behind her plausible-sounding excuses is the fact that she does not want the exposure to their budget or their marriage or their home life, or something.

Installment # 53

I’m told that as a 3-4 year old, when we drove out to grandma and Popu’s summer place toward the eastern end of Long Island, and I had to pee, Popu would try to get me to go in a jar that he always brought along for that purpose in order to avoid having to stop just for me.  I was told that he would chant “Oo-la-la, pee pee in the jar” to encourage me.  I thought, “That doesn’t even rhyme” and figured he must have modified the second ‘la’ to sound more like ‘lar’ to rhyme with ‘jar.’  It finally dawned on me that his pronunciation of ‘jar’ was probably more like ‘jah’ and was pretty close to rhyming.  Donald and Harold were likely still in diapers at the time, so lost out on the opportunity to pee in a jar in close proximity to several people in a crowed car going down the highway next to other cars.

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My natural desire to speak and act like the people around me causes me to really scratch my head about people immigrating to the United States and not trying to fit in.  Those who insist on wearing their strange, off-putting garb and clinging to the old ways; who are not interested in adapting and being accepted…how does that make sense?  I know that if I made a permanent relocation to a land that was foreign to me, with hopes of having a better life, I would be eager to adopt the ways of my host country and to fit in.  Sure, I would lean initially on English-speaking people who had made the transition before me, but then I would get on with assimilation into my new society.  I would not, of course, relocate to a country whose customs I did not want to adopt or emulate.

I am really getting off on a tangent here, but the above reminds me of my attitude toward an incident that took place in Southern California a while back.  A young black male led the police on a high speed car chase, and there was an uproar about police brutality when they finally caught up with him.  My thought was that if you are leading the police on a high speed chase, you should be thinking, “Oh man, when they catch me they are going to beat the shit out of me.”  Think about the danger being created, not just to the pursuers, but to other motorists, pedestrians, to property.  The chase also takes a significant portion of the on-duty police force away from other potentially important situations in the area.  Also, when they drag the driver out of the car, they don’t know if he is on drugs that make him violent and unpredictable.  They don’t know if he is armed; if there is a dangerous person hiding in the back seat; if there are explosives in the trunk.  As the driver, I would fully expect to have a very bad experience at the hands of these angry police officers, yet this individual and many supporters were outraged that the police were more brutal than perhaps strictly necessary.

On another tangent, the first time I heard of school teachers going on strike for better wages and benefits, my thought was, “If you don’t like the pay as a teacher, then go do something else for a living.”  These are all people with college degrees.  Surely they can find jobs that pay better.  If you like teaching so much, you can always do it on the side as a volunteer.  To my mind, the prevailing rate of pay for a given job represents the value that society places on the contribution you are making, especially in the public sector.  Recently, the U.S. Post Office announced plans to stop Saturday mail delivery, and some of the Post Office employees were saying on television that their jobs should be protected – that it wasn’t fair to lay them off just because society doesn’t need their services any longer.  I say, “Get some pride about yourself.  Why would you want to continue to be paid for something that society no longer values?” That is the way my logical mind works.  Perhaps if I had an average amount of common sense and/or was not so naïve and/or not so “clueless,” I would understand these things better.  What does make sense to me is the sentiment that, “Any time someone gets something for nothing, someone else is getting nothing for something.”

One of the benefits of realizing and accepting a lack of common sense which, as I’ve said, came later in life for me, is that I am quick to apologize for any misunderstandings, assuming that it was probably my fault.  If I seem to have hurt someone’s feelings, for example, I immediately assume I said or did something wrong.  I don’t think: “They shouldn’t feel that way,” or “They’re being too sensitive,” etc.  In my young adulthood I was surprised, maybe baffled, to hear that certain groups of people did not like being called by certain terms, since I wouldn’t care what people called me.  That may be because I grew up as a member of the majority, not as a member of any minority, but I think it is also because I don’t take myself too seriously; I laugh at myself easily; I feel like the other person is entitled to his/her opinion, etc.  Over the years, however, I have developed a genuine respect for how others might feel, even if I don’t understand it.

While serving in Germany I heard for the first time that black men do not like to be called “boy.”  I couldn’t imagine why not, even after they explained it to me.  Now of course I can see that it is an obvious attempt to “put someone in their place,” so to speak, as in, “I’m the man; you’re the boy, and don’t you forget it.”  While at Stanford, the university had a crisis of conscience, I guess, and decided it was too insulting or in some other way just not right to call their sports teams the Stanford Indians.  How do the American Indians feel about that?  I have to wonder about the process within society that led to that new-found sensitivity. 

Did the American Indian population grow as a percentage of the American population?  No.  Did they become more vocal?  Not that I am aware.  Did a great leader and spokesman emerge?  I don’t think so.  So what happened?  Did society evolve to a higher plane of consciousness and realize that something we thought was OK for generations had really never been OK?  Professional sports still has the Cleveland Indians, the Atlanta Braves and the Washington Redskins, so maybe it is a west coast thing.  What would it take for the Dallas Cowboys to suddenly realize that they were insulting real cowboys?  Who are the Cincinnati Reds insulting, I wonder.

A lesson I’ve had to learn (and re-learn) the hard way is that people in general are not nearly as ready to laugh at themselves as I am.  I have made comments that I thought were just funny, and people have taken great offense.  There was a woman at work who was a Senior Manager, same as me, and we were responsible for speaking at a department meeting.  She was as round as she was tall.  As the entire staff filed in and looked for seats in the small meeting room, a latecomer was told jokingly to “sit on Jeanie’s lap,” to which I promptly replied, “Jeanie doesn’t have a lap.”  Everyone but her had a great laugh.  Try as I might, I was never able to make it up to her, and our relationship never recovered. 

I remember my first visit to a physical therapist recommended to me by one of my running buddies.  He gave me his business card, which had his name followed by a string of letters such as PT OCS AT,C, which of course referred to his qualifications, but I thought they were overdone to the absurd, so I quipped, “What are those letters – your grades in school?”  That likewise didn’t go over well at all.  I charmed my way out of that one – after all, I was a paying patient so he reluctantly let it go.  But some people just have no inclination to laugh at themselves.

By way of contrast, in one of my first assignments as an auditor (1973) I was part of an audit team led by a senior who I liked and respected.  The team usually left and had lunch together and returned together.  At lunch time one day the senior said, “OK, gang, let’s move out smartly.  In your case, Zades, just move out.”  I thought that was hilarious and took no offense at all.  I guess others were embarrassed for me, but I was not troubled by it at all.  I just thought it was funny.  I used to think people took themselves too seriously, now I chalk it up to common sense on their part.  For career purposes I guess if you don’t take yourself seriously, no one else will.  I guess I don’t care.  Comedic actor Jim Carrey recently tweeted: “Time spent laughing at yourself is time well spent.”  I hope he is right.

Speaking of careers, when I first left public accounting in 1980 I went to work for a small “start up” company that was a client of the audit firm I was leaving.  The founder was a gruff and repulsive sort of person, but I guess because of his track record of success as an entrepreneur, I figured he was probably a lot nicer on the inside than on the outside.  Wrong!  I figured you couldn’t be so nasty and inconsiderate and be a success in business. Duh!.  In the world of Silicon Valley high tech start ups, the meek don’t inherit much of anything.  Reality is closer to a den of gladiators, where the meanest and most intimidating stay alive the longest.

But I didn’t do myself any favors.  My title was VP of Finance and Administration, but all I really knew was accounting and auditing.  Early in my tenure there, the founder (to whom I reported) said we needed to raise more capital, and did I know of any sources or leads.  I clearly remember saying (and regretting saying): “No. I was hoping you did.”  He also asked me to lead the effort to develop a business plan.  I told him I didn’t have a clue how to do that, except to make sure the numbers made sense.  I had never heard of the saying, “Fake it ‘til you make it,” and that wasn’t my nature, anyway.

I remember taking a trip for the company from the San Francisco airport to San Diego.  Having worked at that airport for eight and a half years, ending in June 1973, I thought I knew of a quicker, easier place to park than in the actual parking structure.  But this was 1980, and things had changed. (Things are constantly changing at a major airport, but when you work there, you don’t notice it so much).  Anyway, I found a place to park the company car free of charge, and then walked in my dress shoes, carrying my luggage, all the way to the check-in counter.  Along the way I realized that was really a dumb thing to do.  But it gets worse.  While at the company’s San Diego location, someone at the Cupertino office wanted to use the car.  There was no way I could explain how they could find the car, much less why I parked it there.

Remember that I am a person who was able to graduate from Junior College, Stanford University and Cal Business School (MBA from the University of California at Berkeley) while working full-time, buying a house, and starting a family.  Intelligence and common sense are not mutually exclusive, but they can certainly live separately in separate people!  Or as I said earlier, I just didn’t know that it couldn’t be done.  Probably another key to my success in college was that I didn’t question authority or assignments; I just did them.  There is also that tendency of mine to overestimate how long something should take and so start early, peck away, and be done on time.  Some people with a lot more time on their hands than me were chronically late with deliverables.  I am the opposite of the type that needs a crisis in order to get motivated enough to get the job done.  We hear so much about staying up all night and “cramming” for exams because that is the way some people perform best.  Glad I’m not one of them.  I could never have sustained that for a month, let alone the six years that it took to get through the six years of higher education.

People with common sense are inclined to question things that seem trivial, foolish, or not necessary to them.  I didn’t have time to waste on that; I just did what I was told, and believed everything the teachers said.  Even though I was on average 5 years older than my classmates (23 versus 18 at the start), I saw the teachers (later “professors”) as authority figures.  I remember when one of our kids was at Pioneer High School and commented that one of their teachers seemed to need to justify themselves, regarding their career choice to be a high school teacher instead of something in the “real world” that paid better.  That kind of thought would never have crossed my mind in high school or college.  I just was not that aware and did not question what I saw as authority.

I remember one of my high school football buddies talked me into going with him to speak to the Principal about one of our teachers.  He wanted to report that he thought our teacher was, not a Communist, but a “dupe of the Communist Party.”  We were probably 15.  I had no idea what my friend had heard in class that made him think that.  My awareness and powers of discernment were immature (dormant?) for my age, and probably have been all my life.  This was in the late 1950s during the time in America when, unbeknownst to me, Senator McCarthy was creating a list of suspected Communists and “dupes of the Communist Party” in the United States.    Our House of Representatives created a “House Un-American Activities Committee.”  I remember hearing about that.  Many of the more outspoken people in the entertainment industry were blacklisted at that time, and couldn’t get work.  It bordered on a witch hunt.  I guess my friend heard more about this stuff than I did, and his overactive imagination took over.

At 23, I was married, had been in the military for 3 years, was ready, willing and, to my own surprise, able to learn.  Most of the students around me were fresh out of high school.  They were there because that’s where their friends were, or that’s where their parents sent them, or that’s where they had been brought up to expect to go after high school.  To me it was an exciting opportunity that I never expected to have.  Well, actually, an opportunity I never expected to be ready for or qualified for.  It was many years later that I could see that I did not have the personal attributes that would allow me to put my education to best use.  In later years I found myself in interviews addressing why I had such a powerful education and such a mediocre career.

They say, “You can take the boy out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of the boy.”  There is something similar with me.  Neither of my parents finished high school; none of my many cousins went to college, at least not while I knew them; none of my friends growing up ever expected to go to college.  I remember I used to caddy at a private country club, and the golfers (members) seemed to live in a completely different world than me.  I never wondered how I could get from the “caddy class” of society to the “country club class.”  I never saw myself that way.  It was the same in the military.  I never wondered why I was an enlisted man or why I shouldn’t be an officer.  I suppose my Dad never wondered, either, why he was one of “the little guys” and not a big shot.  When the opportunity came for higher education, it never dawned on me that I would need certain personal attributes commensurate with the education in order to achieve my highest goal, which was CFO of a publicly traded company.

Installment # 52

When our kids were little, the telephone company had a monopoly, similar to the utility companies of today.  AT&T owned the telephone equipment manufacturer, too (Western Electric).  If you needed a telephone, you bought it through the phone company, selecting from the choices they gave you, and paying the price they said.  When you moved, I think you had to give the equipment back.  Young people forming new households, and anyone with shaky credit were required to pay a significant deposit, refundable or transferrable when you moved.  Sandy and I remember the rotary phone and the introduction of the push button phones.  It took a long time to dial on a rotary phone, and if you didn’t take your finger out cleanly on each dial, you could get a wrong number or have to start over again.

Once the federal government broke up the AT&T monopoly and forced them to sell off Western Electric, advances in telephone hardware and service took off.  We watched the evolution of services such as redial, speed dial, recording a greeting, saving messages, digital displays, caller ID, and then of course wireless and competing plans, etc. I mentioned that I lived alone in the apartment in South San Francisco for a few weeks before our October 9, 1966 wedding.  One morning when I had just fallen asleep after the “graveyard” shift at work, the phone rang.  Besides no “caller ID” or voice mail in those days, you couldn’t set the ringer to a silence mode.  The phone would just keep ringing and ringing until the caller finally gave up and hung up, or the recipient gave up and picked up.  I’m not sure it was even a good idea to disconnect the phone.  They were not modular, and the way the phone company made them and connected them, you couldn’t disconnect them from the wall, and the attachment at the phone base was not designed for easy disconnect.  A spiteful caller could actually set his handset down – not hang up – and your phone would ring “until the cows came home” if you didn’t pick it up.

I picked up the phone out of a sound sleep and heard that it was the local blood bank calling; that they had an emergency situation and were desperate for blood donations.  Well, I threw some clothes on and hurried over to the location they gave me, wanting to be a good citizen and help out in this “emergency situation.”  While giving blood, I asked about the “emergency” and drew a puzzled look.  The worker there said that there was no emergency that they were aware of.  She said that they are always in need of donors, and had a group of volunteers who make phone calls on an ongoing basis.  Boy, did I feel stupid.

To this day I don’t know whether the caller tricked me, or whether I was in a fuzzy, partially-awake stupor and misunderstood what I was hearing.  I guess I just didn’t figure that the local blood bank would cold call people to come give blood for no special reason.  I later asked Sandy about it, and she was sure I had just misunderstood.  I was known to be sort of “out of it” when I first woke up (still am).  More than once back in those days I answered the phone when half asleep.  I would think I was awake enough and would try to speak clearly: “Hello?” and I would hear, “Oh, I’m sorry; did I wake you up?” and I would wonder how in the world they knew I had just woken up.  Sandy or one of my friends told me that what I thought was a bright and clear “Hello” actually sounded more like a confused bear growling.  Huh.

I had a client in the telecommunications business who liked to compare the progress and innovations in telecommunications under the free enterprise system with the lack thereof in the quasi-public postal service (the U.S Post Office).  As I write, the Post Office is losing billions of dollars per year, pleading for increases in postage stamps and other postal rates, and trying to figure out how to remain relevant to their customers.  It really helps us appreciate the magic of the free enterprise system.  I notice, too, that private sector companies like FedEx and UPS are able to charge reasonable prices yet remain profitable and stay in business.  It is no doubt the cost structure.  A private sector company will keep its costs under control in order to make a profit, while a quasi-governmental organization that has been in existence for many decades becomes increasingly bloated.  When the business model changes, the organization cannot, or will not change in order to remain viable.

I’ll just mention here in passing that the ZIP code system only came to be in 1962.  I heard about it while stationed in Germany.  I think that is when we were assigned an APO # - Army or Armed Forces PO #.  Typical of me, I lamented the ZIP code system as yet another thing for people to remember, and another way to make a mistake and send a letter to the wrong place.  I was told that if you put down the wrong ZIP code, “they will figure it out.”  And I thought: if they can figure it out, then they don’t need the ZIP code in the first place. (A real progressive visionary I am!).  Here’s another subtle change: When you see those large orange, diamond-shaped signs on the road that say, WORK ZONE AHEAD, be aware that the used to say MEN WORKING.  I’m sure you can guess why the change was needed.  Also, FLAGMAN ahead is now FLAGGER ahead.

When I first heard that the price of gasoline in Germany, which was sold by some strange quantity called the liter, came to about one U.S. dollar per gallon, I could scarcely believe it.  We were paying around 25 cents per gallon when I left the U.S. and for some time after I got back.  I remember thinking that if gas cost $1.00 per gallon in the U.S., with our thousands of miles of open roads and our dependence on commuting and trucking, the whole economy would collapse.  People wouldn’t be able to get to work; they would stop operating motor vehicles.  Trucking companies would go out of business; the automobile industry would collapse, etc.

Eventually the price of gas did reach $1 per gallon, and we were all in shock.  I remember in the mid-to-late 1970s when a news analyst remarked that it was as if during the night someone went around and turn the signs upside down at all the gas stations (It was done manually back then), so that prices went from the 60s to the 90s (cents per gallon).  Since then we have watched the price of gas drift slowly, but inexorably up past $2, $3 and $4 per gallon.  They have currently drifted down toward $3.50, but not before we were hearing that prices could be headed toward $5 and $6 per gallon in the not too distant future.  So we are not counting on a continued decline, or even stabilization at less than $4.  When I read about the record quarterly revenues and profits of the major oil companies, I wonder out loud, “Where is the outrage?”  I don’t see any consumer groups or lobbyist or politicians saying much about it.  Oh, well.  But the free enterprise system is busy coming out with hybrid and all-electric cars.  What a great system!

My upbringing on Long Island was so different from Sandy’s upbringing in California.  First of all, I had no sisters, and Mom was not in a position to teach us about consumerism, either directly or by example.  When we were planning our marriage, all I knew about it were from wedding receptions.  I had no idea what was involved.  I hadn’t heard of creating a gift registry or planning where some of the household necessities were going to come from.  I remember we went to a department store looking for what Sandy said would be our “every day dishes.”  I had never heard of the term or of the concept.  We found a set that we both liked, but she said they were too expensive to be every day dishes, so I helpfully suggested that we could use them every other day.  She thought I was just trying to be funny.  She didn’t know that I was really saying that I had never heard of something as stupid as dishes that were too good to use every day.

Little did I know that when important company came to visit, we couldn’t use the same dishes that we used every day!

In all fairness, we didn’t do much socializing during my growing up years, and I was off to the Army at age 17, so my social skills and maturity level along these lines was rather stunted. I still struggle sometimes with terms that, in my mind, are sort of interchangeable.  I often use the more general term “window treatment” because the correct choice among “shade”, “curtain,” “drapes” and “blinds” is not coming to mind.  We also have “area rugs,” “throw rugs,” “cloth,” “towels,” “carpets,” etc, and it takes me awhile to remember which term applies in a particular case.  Then there is the sliding glass door: “window,” “door,” “slider,” “screen,” “opening,” etc.  Don’t get me started on “pants,” “slacks,” “jeans,” “trousers,” etc. It ain’t easy being me!

I remember the first time I learned that a woman could not wear the same outfit more than once if we were going to see some of the same people for a second time.  I would never in a million years have figured that out.  I told her it would be cheaper to get new friends than to buy a new outfit every time we went somewhere.  Again, I think she thought I was just kidding.  Fortunately, I am not one to insist on other people seeing things my way.  In moving to California, marrying a California girl, and making our home in California, my attitude was that I was the outsider; I needed to adapt and change, not the people around me.  If I did not accept the life style in California, I could and should go back to where I came from.  To this day, for example, when speaking to my grandkids in Canada, I say “Grade 5,” while here in California we say “5^th Grade.”  I only recently became aware that using the word ‘soda’ instead of ‘pop’ is a sure tip off that I am from the states, so I will work on that one.

Similarly, my east coast relatives call scholastic measurements “marks,” while in California we call them “grades.”  Come to think of it, in Canada the kids get “acceptable” or “proficient” or ”mastery” - and “acceptable” is not really acceptable.   It is not too much trouble for me to remember to use the terms that sound more familiar to my listeners.  Sandy sometimes prepares Canadian bacon, and Brianna recently asked, “What do they call it in Canada, American bacon, or what?”  It is good that she wants to know.  I have wished for years that I could speak Spanish, but have been too lazy to focus and learn.  When speaking to someone from Mexico who’s English is very limited, I still use English rather than the few words I know in Spanish, because I figure that the few words I know in Spanish are the same few words they know in English, such as “hello” and “thank you”.

I do draw the line on trying to mimic accents.  I have never appreciated the New York accents, which include the Long Island accent, Bronx, Brooklyn and New Jersey (which I know is not in New York, but is a distinctive accent).  Even in high school I would pronounce the ‘R’ where it was and drop it from where it wasn’t.  For example, the word water: New Yorkers drop the ‘R’ at the end and place it after the ‘A’ so that it sounds more like it is spelled warduh.  Teacher becomes teachuh.  Even while growing up in New York, surrounded by people who talk that way, it always sounded foreign and ignorant to me. In a recent visit to Long Island I got a kick out of hearing the word ‘yogurt’ pronounced as yogit, and ‘arthritis’ pronounced as if it starts with the word author: authoritis.  And this one - due more to education, I guess, than accent: To curve one’s appetite, instead of to curb one’s appetite. But I confess that Sandy mixes up ‘slack’ and ‘flack’, usually talking about someone giving someone ‘slack’ when she means ‘flack’.  She just can’t remember which word to use.  Mom once said, “You Californians – you think you’re the only ones who have no accent.”  I confess I have never heard a California accent, but we do ask people, “Where are you from, originally?” when someone sounds “different.”  Invariably, the person did not grow up in California

I also confess that when Sandy pointed out that apricot, for example, is pronounced with a long ‘A’, not the short ‘A’ that I was using, I did change.  Also, I thought the state of Nevada was pronounced as if spelled Nevahda, because that was how I learned to pronounce it in New York.  There are a few pronunciations that I refuse to go along with on principle.  Californians seem to try to make one syllable words out of orange and mirror, for example.  No way.  In the early years with Sandy, she would wince at my use of words like ‘stoop’ for the front steps, ‘leggings’ for tights and ‘sneakers’ for tennis shoes or runners.  All three are fairly commonplace in California now.  I used to snicker that tennis shoes were not worn by people who played tennis and runners were not worn by runners.  But then again, what were we sneaking up on or away from in our sneakers?  In California, what we referred to in school as ‘gym’ is strictly called ‘P.E.’ for physical education.  But the term gym is widely used here, as it is on the east coast, to refer to adult exercise facilities, like the YMCA, to which Sandy and I belong.  I know one guy, born and raised in the San Jose area, who calls the gym the ‘spa’ for some reason.  Maybe he got it from his wife, who was not raised in this area. 

Sandy’s Dad, Bob Moulton, and his generation used words that have since fallen out of favor.  For 25 cents, he said, “two bits.”  I never asked, and he probably wouldn’t have known, but how can two of anything total 25 cents?  He referred to female dogs as “bitches.”  By the time our generation came along that word was only used as a swear word and an insult.  Old timers also like to say, “I don’t rightly know.”  I think what they mean is “I don’t know what the right answer is.”  There used to be a little dittie that went: “Shave and a haircut: 2 bits,” the point here being that men routinely got shaves at the barber shop.  Today, if a barber were asked to do a shave, he would probably get all nervous, need to look around for his equipment, and cut the customer with his shaky hand.  But “back in the day” good shaving equipment was too expensive for the average person to buy and keep at home. 

That is part of a trend where industrial grade appliances and gadgets that were once found only in stores or restaurants are now common in average people’s homes.  Electric curling irons, toaster ovens, latte makers, outdoor patio heaters and pizza ovens, the huge stainless steel refrigerators, even the huge flat screen TVs: People saw these in commercial operation and over time they made their way into our homes.  My point to the younger folks is that the things you may have grown up with in your homes and taken for granted as rather standard, were pretty much out of the question for middle class families just a couple of generations ago.

Installment # 51

We received 30 days leave per year, which was quite a lot, I found out, compared to corporate America.  I was able to visit several places in Europe, travelling usually with one other guy and sometimes a small posse.  We visited Barcelona, Rome, Paris, Amsterdam a few times, and several beautiful places along the Rheine River in Germany.  In Barcelona we had one big room with 4 or 5 beds for a bunch of us.  We always woke up with hangovers but one morning that sticks out was when we awoke to find one of the guys with cuts, scrapes and bruises, sound asleep wearing what could best be described as “shredded underwear.”  When we finally got the story out of him, he remembered riding one of the motorized scooters that we had rented.  It was dark; he was driving as fast as the thing would go between two sets of light rail tracks.  People seemed to be waving to him from the sidewalk, so he was waving back, grinning and laughing.  

At the end of the block the tracks crossed each other and there was a hole a few feet across and a foot or two deep that the people were evidently trying to warn him about.  He just thought they were being friendly and never saw it coming.  He said that the scooter landed on top of him with the motor still running and one of the handles in his groin. The bike kept going around in circles over him, twisting and grinding up his underwear in the process.  He wasn’t sure what happened after that.  I remember that we took it back to the rental place, expecting a very costly situation, but in French Francs in those days, the damages did not come to very many U.S. dollars.

The electric razor incident I mentioned earlier reminds me of the first time I used an electric hedge trimmer, which I borrowed from a neighbor (Why would I have one of those?)  I did have my own extension cord.  When the trimmer suddenly stopped working, I tried a few things to see what was wrong, including making sure that the extension cord was plugged in to both the outlet and the trimmer cord.  I finally returned it to the owner, telling him that for some reason it had stopped working.  He took one look and pointed out that I had cut the trimmer cord.  Awkward!  I don’t recall ever reimbursing him for ruining his electric trimmer.

That was the same neighbor who showed me how a microwave oven worked.  I was flabbergasted that it could heat up the food without harming the container, and in many cases not even make the container more than a little warm.  He said that you had to experiment with things to find out how many minutes or seconds you should set it for, and that there were some materials, like aluminum and tin foil that you should never use in the microwave unit, or you might actually blow it up and destroy it; maybe start a fire.  I figured microwave ovens in the home would never catch on.  Too dangerous; too difficult; we already had stoves, ovens, toasters; what did we need this for?  And the first ones were huge, taking up too much precious counter space.

That reminds me of the time I was trying to fix or replace the screen door on the first house we owned.  I asked my neighbor if he had any little screws I could use, and he asked, “Metal screws?”  I said, “I don’t know; whatever they make screws out of.”  He of course meant screws that you would screw into wood versus screws that you would screw into metal or aluminum (like a screen door).  I can still see his facial expression of disbelief, amusement and the struggle not to laugh in my face.

I remember buying my first ladder: The aluminum ones cost several times more that the wooden ones.  I couldn’t imagine what idiot would pay so much for an aluminum one when a wooden one cost so much less and did the same thing.  Guess what – aluminum ones last indefinitely and are a lot lighter and easier to carry and maneuver in awkward places.  I twisted my ankle on a wooden ladder a few weeks before my first marathon (1982), because a wooden step loosened and turned on me as I placed my full weight on it.  That would not have happened with an aluminum ladder.  Also, despite how strong you might be, do you want your wife or child trying to handle a wooden ladder?

I remember, before I was married, buying a comb.  I saw that the hair brushes were a lot more expensive than the combs, and I asked the clerk, “Why would anyone pay that much for a brush, when a ten-cent comb does essentially the same thing?”  This was before the days of long hair on men; and women were a complete mystery, so I never thought of their needs.  The clerk did not know what to say without calling me an idiot.

I learned to avoid going to the hardware store without an exact replica of what I wanted, either the old one I was trying to replace or a picture of it, or a complete written description.  Otherwise, the guy behind the counter would invariably have a question that I did not have the answer to.  Is it top mounting or side mounting?  Inside diameter or outside diameter? Male or female adaptor?  What is the thread count? In planning my time for any simple project I learned to expect to make at least two trips to the hardware store to get one thing.

I have ruined so many things at Michelle’s house over the years that my son-in-law, Kevin, has said he may require a security deposit whenever I visit.  In September 2012 he delegated to Ryan and me the task of assembling two outdoor heater towers – the kind where the tower is made of glass and you can watch the flames shooting up inside the tower.  It is quite spectacular to watch, though I don’t find they give off much heat.  Well, Ryan and I opened the boxes and saw an incredible array of parts and instructions.  We agreed that this was way too confusing, and the risks were too great.  We would be working with breakable glass and flammable gas.  Evidently, when Kevin returned and found nothing done, I explained that Ryan and I had decided we would rather have him think that we were lazy, instead of stupid, so we just left the project alone. I had forgotten about that, but Kevin reminded me a few months later during our December visit.  He had been chuckling about that for months.

During a winter visit, I gathered up kindling to start a fire and spotted several pieces of wood on a table by the back door that looked ideal.  It was a long walk in the snow to the wood supply, so I figured someone left them by the door for convenience in building a fire.  A few days later, Kevin asked about those “slats.”  Turns out they were for the hot tub cabana, and not easy to replace.  Oops!  One night I was the last one out of the hot tub and volunteered to put the cover back in place (in the dark; no flashlight).  I felt some resistance but just pulled a little harder.  Turns out there is a safety mechanism that needs to be released before you lower the cover down over the hot tub.  Who knew? Totally bent it, rendering the hot tub inoperable until after the holidays.  During earlier visits I misjudged an object (that shouldn’t have been in the driveway) and scraped the paint off the passenger side of one of their trucks; and I pulled too far forward with an SUV, bursting a bag of something, spilling its contents into the flower garden.  The contents turned out to be a fairly expensive chemical used in the winter time for melting the ice near the walkways…burnt the hell out of the plants and wasted the product.  But what was it doing there in summertime, anyway?

In helping with the 2013 flood we were digging out and uncovering a variety of strange-looking objects - full of mud - that I couldn’t possibly identify.  I was to pile “throw-aways” in one area and “keepers” in another area where they would be power washed and reclaimed.  I referred to them as Kevin’s “tools and toys” because it is never clear to me which of his farm and household activities is really work versus fun.  I don’t know whether he is using something as a tool or as a toy.  Anyway, it was really laughable how unable I was to determine the keepers versus the throw-aways.  I tended to err on the side of “throw-away,” and Kevin would look at me like I was crazy and retrieve things for power washing and saving.  I couldn’t tell what the heck they were, but they looked like mud ball junk to me.

I remember our first telephone message recorder.  I was so intimidated about creating a greeting!  I would write it out, practice, ask Sandy how it sounded, break into a sweat while making the recording, listen and try again.  It helped when I heard my neighbor’s greeting.  His was so bad I knew what to avoid.  He gave complete, detailed instructions in a slow monotone on how to leave a message, repeated the instructions, in case you had never done this before, and ended with AND REMEMBER (pause for affect): WAIT UNTIL YOU HEAR THE BEEP BEFORE SPEAKING!  That helped me realize that people weren’t morons and just needed to know that you were not picking up, and could leave a message if they wanted.

Kids adapt to technology so easily!  One time during the period when I was still struggling with recording a greeting, Amy and her friend decided to have fun and replace my greeting with one of their own.  It came to my attention after a business associate commented on what he had heard when he dialed my number.  It was a rhyming jingle in young girls voices, something like, “The Zades’ are not home; to answer the phone; so you know what to do …” (I don’t remember what rhymed with ‘do’).  The words ‘home’ and ‘phone’ were stretched out to two syllables each; so was the word ‘do’.  They thought I was going to be so mad, because it was a business associate that heard it.  But I just didn’t take things that seriously.  I thought it was hilarious, plus it helped me get over the trauma of creating a greeting.

Young people reading this (if any!) may be interested to know that telephones were stationary for many, many years, either attached to a wall out of reach of sticky little fingers, or sitting on a counter top.  The great innovation was getting a longer extension cord, normally so ‘mom’ could have more mobility while talking on the phone.  It seemed like feelings of neglect and need would come over children as soon as ‘mom’ got on the phone.  It was almost universal: mom is tethered to the phone…child needs to act up and demand her undivided attention.  If I recall, Michelle was still tethered to a phone when Ryan, Alex and Justin were little.  Kevin found a way for her to use the house phone hands free as she moved about the house.  By the time cell phones were common her kids were old enough to not start acting up when mom was on the phone. 

Recently I used the term “cell phone” around Brianna and her friend, and Brianna felt obliged to inform me that people don’t say “cell phone” anymore; they just say “phone.”  Good point.  We dropped our home phone (now known as a “land line”) a few years ago, and so have most people, so it goes without saying that a reference to a phone means a cell phone.  Why be redundant?

I think it was in the early 1990s that a client of mine was trying to develop electronic components for use in the early mobile phones.  There must be some movies out from that period that show someone using a large, cumbersome phone while driving in a car.  The device was almost the size and shape of a shoe box.  They were actually called car phones, not mobile phones.  I remember a speaker saying that his first sales job was selling these things to businesses for about $750 each.   Anyway, my client explained that there were going to be cell towers strategically placed along highways, and as a motorist passed out of the range of one tower, he would be within the range of the next, and the electronic device under development would enable the car phone to transition smoothly and pick up the new, stronger signal with no interruption in service.  As usual, I thought this was a harebrained idea that would never work.  Who was going to erect all these towers?  Who needed to make phone calls from their cars?  Doh!

Telephone poles were so ugly!  And growing up they were everywhere, along with TV antennas.   When we moved to San Jose in 1975 we found that our development, built in 1972, had banned telephone poles.  I guess it was the phone company that had run the trenches and installed the phone lines underground.  I don’t remember.  A few years later a hot topic at the annual homeowners’ association meeting was banning TV antennas.  We had gone to cable when we moved in, but there were some homes within our 152-home development that still had the ugly antennas sticking up, and some of the neighbors didn’t like it.  For years thereafter I would notice homes that still had their antennas.  At this writing, I would need to go outside and look around, maybe drive around, to know for sure whether there were any TV antennas still in evidence.  That is probably an example of my “live and let live” attitude.  If I don’t like how something looks, I don’t have to look at it!