I sat in the classroom without really being in the class, having mentally checked out a few weeks earlier. I looked out the window at the DePaul University extension campus as the snow began to fall.

I love snow, and the way it fell against the glow of campus lights was damn near magical.

Macroeconomics, however, was not.

I thought back to the last time I was academically happy. It certainly wasn’t in that classroom. It was at that moment that I decided to drop out of the MBA program with four classes left.

It was time to return home.

My academic journey was hardly a straight line as life frequently got in the way. Several years earlier, I was halfway through the master’s in Writing program at DePaul when the temptation of practicality overtook me, and I dropped Writing to pursue my MBA.

Career movement and all.

The day after that macroeconomics class, I snuck out of work early and drove to DePaul, where I dropped the class, my MBA program, and re-enrolled in the Writing program.

My first class back was Grammar and Structure. Dr. Craig Sirles, who I had years before, read the roster and paused when he came to my name.

“Let me tell you about Randy Dojutrek.” He took off his glasses and leaned on the lectern.

“He was a brilliant student who disappeared some years ago.” He continued, “Which was it, Joliet or Stateville?” referencing two Illinois prisons.

“Neither,” I replied, “MBA program.”

“Ugh,” was his only comment.

I was home.

I tell that story a lot when I have coffee talks with people looking to start graduate school. It almost never fails that the programs they ask me about are the MBA and the technology track.

It never fails that I ask them to expand their thinking. It’s not that I have anything against MBAs or advanced technical degrees, it’s just that graduate school is difficult enough and true interest in a subject helps to guarantee it’s viewed as less of a slog and more of a treat.

Academically, that is.

While parts of my MBA program were mildly interesting, I knew in my heart, mind, and career choices that I would never need to know rises, runs, slopes, graphs, and demand curves.

All vitally important in business, of course. But my interest was in the people side of leadership, and economics never particularly resonated with me.

One thing the MBA did teach me, however, was the notion of a sunk cost. Defined as money, time, or effort that has already been spent and cannot be recovered, this single premise has universal value across all disciplines, specifically in the fallacy of continuing down a path because so much effort has been previously expended.

I have used that in so many conversations and decisions that it was worth the entire amount of money spent on the MBA program.

At least, that’s what I tell myself.

Writing, however, has served me in good stead as both leader and, well, writer, once my corporate expiration date arrived.

So I challenge their thinking.

“What do you enjoy?” is a key question I ask. It’s amazing how difficult it is for most people to answer.

So far, no one has ever answered economics.

I then ask for long-term career goals. Many say leadership. Through the years and my experiences, I’ve become pretty good at determining those who mean it and those who think that’s what they should do.

The truth is that, whatever their end goal may be, critical thinking goes a long way in not only acquiring specialized knowledge but also applying it.

Modern leadership asks for more than subject matter expertise in accounting and economics. There’s communication, psychology, sociology, ethics, and a slew of other disciplines.

To quote Sheldon Cooper, “Oh, the humanities!”

I’ve earned bachelor’s degrees in English, Secondary Education, and Computer Science. I completed my master’s in Writing (and had a blast doing so), and went on to earn another master’s in Organizational and Relational Communications.

And oh so close to that MBA.

From a practical standpoint, I view them as one degree.

My MBA, if you will.

That strange 80/20 mix of humanities and science provided me with the tools and framework to navigate a career with more twists and turns than I care to remember.

Time and money well spent.

And of course, my dear friend, the sunk cost.

From a business standpoint, that was a pretty good academic resume, and I achieved a modicum of success with it through the years.

Inevitably, my coffee companions balk at the thought of humanities furthering a technical career, and I get it, but the mistake is thinking that humanities are the antithesis of business when in fact they’re more its hippie cousin.

Making connections, especially across seemingly disparate things, is both an art and a science. It transcends any single discipline while drawing from many. The reality is that while graduate programs provide the opportunity, it’s up to the student to recognize the connections.

Some develop it through deep specialization.

I developed mine by connecting different disciplines and writing requests for corporate tuition reimbursement.

I just traded labs and code for classes in bars and Guinness.

And classes in bars—always a plus.

I will say that in the decades I’ve been in technology, not one interviewer ever asked me about my technical degree. They focused instead on the others.

You see, novelty can be a differentiator.

And to be fair, most technical people hate writing.

They’re in for a treat.

When I was knee-deep in my Computer Science degree, I decided to switch to English teaching. My mom, ever supportive, said this was a good thing as computers would eventually program themselves.

She said that in 1982, forty-four years ago as of this writing.

AI is increasingly making this, and more, a reality. We’re not quite there yet, but we’re getting closer.

I fondly call AI “English teachers’ revenge.”

Prompt engineering is now the ultimate expression of GIGO (garbage in, garbage out), and the ability to communicate clearly, concisely, and intentionally has become more important than ever, along with evaluating outcomes, questioning assumptions, and recognizing when a persuasive answer is just plain wrong.

Feels a lot like education and communications to me.

None of this would be possible without scientists working in machine learning, deep learning, neural networks, generative AI, and a host of other specialties.

All of this work allows me to ask a simple question.

“Explain macroeconomics to me as if I were a five-year-old.”

I now know more than I learned in that class.

And yes, that one’s on me.

AI will have radical changes to the makeup of existing degrees. It will move us away from some specializations and increase the value of others. People who can connect disciplines, exercise individual judgment, and, most importantly, understand human behavior will ultimately be able to navigate our new reality and make the most of AI.

At least until the robots rise to kill us.

Just kidding, I think.

I’m a big believer in continuous learning as well as grad school, but for the love of God, think more broadly. Balancing work and school is hard enough without bringing work to school. I left the MBA program when it felt like work.

Writing never did.

Mix it up a little.

I’d get a degree like that.

Or maybe I already did.

I was channel surfing the other evening when I happened upon Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds, a terrifying movie about a coastal California town, Bodega Bay, besieged by their bird population.

There goes getting to bed early.

The birds organize, attack, and kill without apparent provocation, standing down just as suddenly. The movie ends without knowledge of what comes next as people vacate the town, as the birds watch.

What I love about running into movies I saw as a kid is that I get to rewatch them through adult eyes. When I was younger, the most frightening thing about the movie was the suddenness of it all.

There was no warning.

No precursor.

Then it dawned on me. It wasn’t the suddenness of it all.

It was the mass.

A bird is harmless. Thousands of birds are terrifying.

Moviegoers wouldn’t have flocked to the theaters to see The Bird.

But what scares me most as an adult is that I’ve seen it happen repeatedly.

It’s how organizations operate.

It’s how society operates.

Hell, it’s how we operate.

And then another movie came to mind.

In Men in Black, Agent K (a deadpan Tommy Lee Jones) explains to prospective recruit James Darrell Edwards III (Will Smith at his most cocky) why the fact that aliens are living on Earth is hidden from the general population.

After all, James argues, people are smart enough to handle it.

“A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals, and you know it,” counters K.

Then, I started thinking about organizations and came to a conclusion.

Agent K is correct.

Maybe the scariest thing about the Birds is that we are never privy to the catalyst that led to their uprising.

And that’s not uncommon.

As a leader, I’ve had to navigate, and sometimes even execute, wide-scale terminations.

Oh, sorry, reductions in force.

Or even more innocuously, a RIF.

I remember some years back, I had to administer a RIF, an ever-more-common reaction when a corporation is provoked by some dimension of the economy, regulatory change, mergers, acquisitions, competitors, or even some senior leader reading the wrong article.

So the birds gather.

People are told that it’s nothing personal. In fact, there won’t even be an individual who claims it was their idea.

It’s the algorithm, after all. A construct so fair that you’ll have to take our word for it.

I know this to be true as I had to let go two senior leaders from the same critical area, losing valuable history while gaining risk. The only input I had was complaining. The department next to mine let go two top performers who happened to sit next to someone on a performance improvement plan.

That didn’t sit well with the team, who continued to carry the poor performer while now having to absorb the work of the two top performers.

Believe me, they complained.

It’s not personal, we were once again assured.

The algorithm made the selection. The how and why were every bit as mysterious as the catalyst that pissed off the birds.

You see, a singular bird had to have been the first to attack, but you’ll never know which as the flock provides anonymity.

The citizens of Bodega Bay could ask, I guess, I mean other than the fact that birds can only speak through their actions.

Same as the algorithm, albeit with more feathers.

When we were growing up, our teachers instructed us to never use passive voice. Show that the subject of the sentence performs the action. “I hit the ball.” Not “The ball was hit.”

Simpler times.

“Reductions were necessary,” we’re told.

Individual accountability diffuses into the flock, with the decision makers ensuring that the messengers are well equipped with the right things to say.

Even AI needs a prompt.

We’re seeing this play out as Major League Baseball approaches the December expiration of its collective bargaining agreement.

It seems that the billionaire owners are a little chafed by the salaries paid to millionaire players, and want a salary cap, even though they are responsible for the explosion of pay. For their part, the players believe in a strict meritocracy, cash ceilings be damned.

They have mouths to feed too, so we’re told.

The owners are overwhelmingly united on this front.

And they flock, united in cause.

The players’ union also is overwhelmingly united on this front.

And they flock, united in cause.

And the fans?

We just get increasingly nervous that our national pastime is at risk.

Earlier this season, Major League Baseball reported a 44% increase in viewership for nationally televised games compared with the same period last year.

Baseball loves their stats.

But the owners have to “save” baseball from crazy high salaries making it impossible for teams with small payrolls to compete.

Except for, of course, the Milwaukee Brewers and Tampa Bay Rays, possessors of two of the lowest payrolls in baseball (with the best records in their respective leagues), currently playing in the World Series.

Well, maybe not all stats.

Who are the owners saving baseball from? Ironically, themselves. The players get the contracts. They don’t write them.

The players will tell you their families have to eat.

Caviar apparently.

As for the fans?

Both flocks will tell you it’s nothing personal, but the game must be saved.

What is personal is the fact that we’re no better.

We may not have algorithms or collective bargaining, but we definitely have the desire to flock, abdicating our individuality to the altar of “Everyone’s doing it.”

After all, Beanie Babies were once thought to be shrewd investment opportunities.

What are you laughing at, NFT owners?

Sociologists and psychologists could probably weigh in and explain, but even some of them thought mullets were good ideas.

After all, who’s not down for some business in front and a party in back?

Certainly, I was.

Maybe the birds had it right. The safety of the flock virtually guarantees that Bill the Cardinal can’t be held responsible when Suzy the Gull started it.

And who can tell? There are millions of goddamned birds.

You can’t be mad with the CIO as he’s only following the algorithm.

Both the owners and the players are trying to save baseball.

Haircuts are a form of personal expression.

Corporations have algorithms. Unions have themes. People have trends.

And the results remain, ownerless and silent.

Who the fuck knows why the birds did what they did, but I’ve never trusted a bird since, and that was only a movie.

I’d write more, but I’m getting a little shaggy, and I have a haircut appointment.

I miss my mullet.

About a year ago, for the first time in 60 years, I truly had nowhere to go and all day to get there.

Corporate America and I had an amicable breakup.

One cardboard box and an elevator ride down, and I was once again a free man.

The problem was, my relationship with work wasn’t a passing affair. It was a fifty-some-odd-year commitment.

As Chicago likes to sing, that’s a hard habit to break.

Not that I wasn’t delighted. Retirement had eliminated the last obstacle to a life of writing. But the lack of structure was a bit unnerving.

My friend Scott, also recently retired, decided to spend a full year doing nothing while figuring out what he wanted to do long term.

Turns out, that was nothing.

I love self-awareness.

Scott’s my hero.

There are times when I’m more delusional than aware, so I jumped right to an expert in the field when it came to becoming a successful man—Matthew McConaughey.

Alright, alright, alright.

Buying his “The Successful Man” journals, I figured it would be the perfect way to create a framework for success, as he promised self-development, accountability, and progression.

Hell, it’s right on the journal cover.

After all, when has an actor ever lied to you?

That lasted about a week.

The journals provided lots of goal setting, positive nonsense, looking deeply inside yourself, daily updates, vision statements, goals, action plans, yada, yada, yada. If McConaughey really used all this to become successful, then he was experiencing something I wasn’t.

Then I remembered the man who brought us Dallas Buyers Club also brought us Surfer, Dude.

Next.

The Habits app was simple enough. Pick any number of things that you are setting out to do every day. That felt like a healthy amount of structure without being too intrusive. I started with 5 habits: responsible social media use, physical therapy, reading 30 minutes per day, writing 500 words per day, and meditating.

Easy peasy lemon squeezy.

Then the reminders started coming.

And the metrics.

And the failures.

You’d be surprised how a day fills up when you have nothing officially to do. I wasn’t even wasting my time lying around watching TV. Days just inexplicably fill up.

You’ll find out.

Staring at the monthly results didn’t do much for my sense of self-esteem. I couldn’t believe I was better at navigating the inane maze of corporate bullshit than figuring out what to do with complete freedom.

I didn’t even have HR to irritate me this time.

Next stop—calorie journaling.

Everything I ate and drank.

Every day.

Until I die.

And I thought parenthood was a big commitment.

There were more.

The magic algorithm of Reels recognized a lost and slightly insecure man.

It sensed blood in the water.

Recommendations ranged from the simple, MS To Do, to the incredibly complex, Notion (yeah, I said it).

I tried them all. Mostly on a free trial basis.

But that’s the thing about trials—you are judged.

My Apple Watch even told me that I could be hypertensive, probably because I wasn’t exercising enough.

You’re my watch, not my mother.

I even started rooting for those sad sacks in animated ads where they let themselves go so badly that they get passed over for promotion, get talked about behind their backs, eat too much cake, and inevitably lose their wives.

There’s nothing wrong with cake.

You be you, you magnificent sad sack.

As it turned out, the round-the-clock monitoring, measuring, and notifying that I was falling short of near-impossible standards wasn’t helping; it was nagging.

At least Mom loved me.

Then it dawned on me.

A year after freeing myself, I was just trying to wear more comfortable shackles.

At least they weren’t fuzzy and pink.

Progress.

When my former boss Jason retired at a relatively young age, he warned me that it would take six months to detox from corporate life.

Turns out I needed 11.

Free of Matthew McConaughey journals and self-help apps that were more self-flagellation than self-help, I bought a pad of long Post-it notes.

With limitless opportunity before me, I started each morning with my “First Five” list: five things I must accomplish today.

Make that “should,” not “must.”

Goddamn.

At least I resisted color-coding them.

Some days I even add “Next Five.”

And the beauty of my Post-it notes is that I can ball them up when finished, and they quietly fall off when their adhesive dries up.

There’s no app for that.

I should design one.

I’ll just add that to my “Never Five” list.

Throughout my career, it never failed that when the job market was booming and turnover was high, senior management would lay it at the feet of direct middle management.

“Engage your team more.”

“Take them for pizza.”

“Buy some smiley-face stickers.”

When the job market took a turn for the worse, and staff stayed put, it was always due to senior executive initiatives, the corporate vision, and the all-important mission statement that had everyone inspired to do their best work and make this corporation their family.

So, who do you trust?

The money, stupid.

In a recent PwC survey on workforce hopes and fears, 79% of Australian workers reported being proud of their work, with enthusiasm and willingness to go above and beyond close behind.

However, only 41% trusted senior management, and fewer than half believed they were fairly paid.

Any guesses as to how the job market is going these days?

Must be direct management—get out the stickers.

Trust, however, can be a squishy thing.

I always go back to the tale of the frog and the scorpion.

A scorpion walks up to a frog at the edge of a river.

“Can you carry me across the river?” the scorpion asks.

“No way,” the frog replies. “You’ll sting me and I’ll die.”

“If I sting you, we’ll both die,” counters the scorpion.

That makes sense to the frog, who puts the scorpion on his back and starts crossing the river. Halfway across, the scorpion stings the frog.

“Why?” asks the dying frog. “Now you’ll die too.”

“I can’t help myself,” the scorpion replies. “It’s my nature.”

And so it goes.

In corporate offices across the land, senior management is extolling their excellent turnover rates while “realigning for efficiencies.”

Hello, needing more from you while providing less.

Goodbye pizza.

In difficult times, senior management often shifts from poise to panic, leading to shortsightedness. It’s a shame it comes to that, but you see, it’s their nature.

In a perfect, or at least a balanced, world, the employer/employee relationship operates at 50/50. Motivations are generally positive ones, and the employer benefits from you, and you benefit from your employer. Both parties thrive on acting in each other’s interests.

And both the frog and the scorpion survive.

And the workplace thrives without stickers.

But let’s be honest, shortsightedness is never far away.

I witnessed an organizational realignment that sent one of our worst managers home. No harm in that. His team certainly didn’t mind. The problem was, after HR’s magic algorithm aligned him out of a job, it failed to recognize that he was the only one in the entire organization that knew what the hell a particular system did and how to maintain it.

The company wanted him back and reached out, stressing how much he was needed.

He stressed that he would come back only if he were made a senior director.

Well, congratulations on your promotion!

Because employees can be scorpions too.

My employer was a scorpion when it let me go unexpectedly one fine September day, not worrying about the impact it would have on me or my family.

What it really did was beat me to the sting.

I was already planning to retire one fine March afternoon, with ample time for the company to prepare. I wasn’t angry. I was just done.

Same result, different stinger.

In a strong job market, employees’ wish lists can become grievances, and those negative emotions make for powerful stingers.

And so it goes.

When the job market is strong, so are employees. When it is weak, it’s time for the employers to get on top.

Are there villains in this tale?

That depends on your perspective.

Trust doesn’t die; it’s just really hard to overcome the nature of corporations or the people that inhabit them.

The frog had a choice. It could’ve said nope, but gave more weight to the scorpion’s words than its nature.

The scorpion could have chosen to overcome that nature, while the frog could have used better judgment.

Sometimes you choose wisely.

And sometimes, you just get stung.

Me? I would have just learned to swim.

Three days after knee surgery I dragged myself into the office to prove I was indispensable. My boss’s boss called me a moron. He was right.

With equal parts dedication and ambition, it was time for me to put on my cape. My VP was splitting time between the office and the hospital where his terminally ill wife was being treated, and I decided I didn’t have the luxury to miss a week after having knee surgery.

Part of that was genuine. I didn’t want him worrying about work with his wife in the hospital. The less admirable part was that our boss, our CIO Lou, was very much in the office. He was a man I admired immensely in the short amount of months he was there. I wanted him to notice.

It was only ACL surgery, I told myself. Not a knee replacement. The doctor’s orders were clear: rest, PT, and no mile-long treks through Chicago at rush hour.

Regardless, I made the trek to work, being careful not to get swept away by the crowds of Metra commuters oblivious to my brace or crutches. Long before Uber, taxis were scarce at rush hour, so a mile walk on crutches it was, careful to not add shoulder separation to my list of injuries. Once at work, I settled in my office and let the day come to me.

I was having a meeting in my office with my leg propped up on another chair. Whether theatrical or medically advised, I cannot remember, but that version of me certainly wasn’t subtle regarding the injury or the heroism.

As my meeting continued, I heard a knock at my door. It was Lou. Knowing about the surgery, I was pleased that he came to check in on me. After all, what’s a hero without a fawning audience?

“How’s the knee?” Lou asked in his New York accent that made everything seem sarcastic.

“Not bad, a little swollen,” I replied.

“Let me see it,” Lou instructed, oblivious that in 20 more years that request would be so out of bounds it now seems laughable.

Rolling up my pants leg, the swelling was still there along with a fresh four-inch stitched incision and several holes poked in my knee. While the knee wasn’t disgusting, it was also not exactly appealing. I seized the moment to cement my heroism.

“Here you go,” I offered, gearing up for the inevitable admiration, but just in case it needed a push, I added, “Three days later, here I am. What a hero.” That last addition may have overplayed my hand.

Without a change in voice or tenor, Lou calmly replied, “I think you’re a fucking moron.”

Not exactly the adulation I expected.

Lou continued, “All you did by coming in was to tell your team that you don’t trust them. You have to drag yourself back from surgery to make sure they don’t screw things up in your absence.”

He walked away with the less-than-inspirational addition, “Idiot.”

We can debate Lou’s approach, his verbiage, or even that he did that in front of one of my team, but I didn’t have to decipher the message. It was clear. And it was right.

The truth is, if I were doing my job the way I was supposed to, my absence wouldn’t have mattered. My team was capable. Lou was there. I was a phone call away.

Instead, I dragged myself a mile through downtown Chicago on crutches because some part of me desperately wanted to show how necessary I was.

Lou saw me that day.

Just not the way I’d hoped.

I had the honor and the privilege of attending a retirement party for me the other night, about a year after the magic algorithm determined it was time for me to become a writer, ready or not. It took a year to arrange mainly due to me not wanting one, and being a bit of a brat in not providing availability, a guest list, etcetera.

A coaching evaluation once discovered that while I crave recognition, I’m uncomfortable with compliments.

Guilty as charged.

Instead of a lot of sentimental testimonials, they made me a book called Moments: From your HCSC Family Over the Years. It opens with, “You are the writer, but we supplied the illustrations and our favorite Randy quotes.”

Bastards. They published a book before me, about me.

The night, however, was wonderful, and I truly love everyone who was there, but it forced me to think about my legacy as a leader, a self-evaluation that doesn’t easily come with an objective criterion.

So I made my own.

I started with three leaders I still think about.

First, there was Bob.

He was my vice president when I was a new manager. A down-to-earth leader whose low-key approach belied one of the keenest intellects I ever encountered. Our styles were very different, but our core beliefs were the same.

Bob was going through a personal tragedy at the time my son Ben was born. In and out of the office, Bob spent most of his time at his wife’s bedside. As I would do anything for him, I was working extra hours to ensure he wouldn’t have to think about the office. Besides, Mary wasn’t due for another month.

Timing is a bitch.

Mary went into labor a month early, and Ben was born. As with most preemies, there were issues, and both Mary and Ben had to spend some extended time in the hospital. There wasn’t much I could do there, so one afternoon I snuck into the office to catch up on some things.

It coincided with Bob doing the same.

Walking past my office, Bob looked surprised to see me.

“What are you doing in?” he asked.

“Just catching up on some things,” was my reply.

“Are Mary and Ben out of the hospital?”

“Not yet. There are still some issues Ben needs to get over.” I explained, not wanting to get too into the weeds with a man who was currently trying to cut down weeds of his own.

Then Bob surprised me.

“You know I love you, right?” he offered, with me having no idea where this was headed.

“Of course,” I answered.

“Good, because if I see you here the next time I walk past your office, I’ll fire you.” He stated as matter-of-factly as one could.

I was stunned, but I probably shouldn’t have been.

“Let my situation inform yours. Family is always first.”

This was a lesson I thought I had learned, but Bob was right.

I left immediately.

With this lesson in hand, flash forward to about a decade later. New job, new boss.

Bob II.

No lie, same first name, same last name initial.

I have a lot of Bobs, Marys, and Daves in my life.

Anyway, my daughter Eliot had contracted a serious virus that was going around. It manifested itself in severe leg pain, to the point where she could barely walk. Admitted to the infectious disease ward of our hospital, Eliot was lucky it only hit her legs, as another child had it in their lungs and died that week.

Like I said, serious.

Mary and I were in the hospital around the clock. Having learned the lesson of family first, I dropped everything to be there. I would worry about work later.

Then I got a text from Bob II.

“Eileen (my direct boss at the time) told me what’s going on with Eliot. Do whatever it takes to make it right. Don’t worry about work. This isn’t PTO. You do so much for us. It’s time we did something for you.”

Two decades later, I remember those words as clearly as if I’d received them today, and get a bit emotional every time I repeat them.

Another lesson.

Rules don’t always count.

Finally, there was Mary Beckham.

I had a team in Texas and Mary was their leader. She was a Texan through and through, from her accent to her approach. She was smart, sharp, and saw all the same absurdities in corporate life that I did, and we talked about them often, usually with a Texas Mary-ism attached.

“I hate to throw another cat on your hot roof,” was one of her favorites.

Lots of cats and hot roofs at that time.

I had a lot of fun with Mary, teasing her for her Texas-isms and comparing notes on why the hell so many inept people surrounded us in various support departments.

A question never satisfactorily answered.

She also taught me the difference between a critter (good, like a rabbit) and a varmint (bad, like a raccoon).

Through the years, I’ve continued to educate others in this regard. It was the least I could do.

Then Mary got pancreatic cancer.

She fought it like a Texan, with brash defiance and reluctant acceptance.

After a prolonged time away, she even came back to work, fighting immense pain.

I didn’t push back on this, as I knew she was going to go down swinging.

One day, after a particularly difficult meeting, Mary called me.

“Are you alright?” she asked. “I’m worried about you.”

“What do you mean?” I replied.

“I don’t like how your voice sounds,” she said. “You sound tired.”

Mary was right. I was tired and even a bit discouraged, but how could I complain to her?

She did not let me off the hook and continued to explain that I needed to take care of myself for my family and the team. I can’t say she was chastising me, but I also can’t say she wasn’t. I tried to turn the tables and asked how she was doing, but she would have none of that, saying she was fine and to worry about myself.

Mary wasn’t fine, and that was the last conversation I had with her.

She died a week later.

To this day, I have her bizarre office magnets next to me on my lamp, along with a book she bought me, Sun Tzu Was a Sissy: Conquer Your Enemies, Promote Your Friends, and Wage the Real Art of War.

That was Mary.

And that’s the thing about legacies. I’m not sure the Bobs or Mary ever realized how much those moments meant to me. They provided the criteria for what I considered great leadership and informed how I would try to lead the next generation of leaders.

Perhaps my buddy Dave had the proper perspective for the day, as he pointed out some key facts.

“Forget the retirement part of the retirement party,” he told me. “Focus on the party part.”

He pointed out that lots of people leave jobs without twenty-some people wanting to get together and celebrate them a year later.

“You do. Focus on that.”

Then he added, “Just me being a blunt mentor, I guess.”

Goddammit.

Dave was right, and I even had a book to prove it.

And a party.

Humanity first and always.

At least that’s what I tried to do as a leader aiming to be a critter, not a varmint.

It only took me about thirty years to come up with a conclusion that I knew thirty years ago.

I am a writer.

However, I didn’t always have this clarity. Or did I? It’s hard to tell even with the benefit of hindsight.

Lou was new to the organization, and he was every bit as intimidating as he was brilliant. He was the definition of a change agent in a title company that would need several more iterations to get to conservative. Lou wanted to change all that and was clear everyone needed to get on board and change their method of thinking immediately.

This came as quite a shock to those positioned above and below me. Not that they were resistant, but Lou was all about confrontation, sometimes friendly, sometimes rough, but always challenging. It was his way or the highway. Lou’s accent and swearing weren’t even necessary to tell you he was from New York.

Where else could he be from?

The fact that we were driving alone after a business dinner was due to our fellow travelers squeezing six into one car to avoid driving with Lou. I relished it up until Lou’s very simple question.

“So, if you could be anything, what would it be?”

The best answer I could think of was also the most vague.

“I want to be a writer,” I offered.

“Then why aren’t you?” he replied without a moment’s hesitation. To be fair, it was a question I often asked myself.

“Fear of failure, I guess,” was my answer.

“Bullshit,” Lou replied in his usual manner of telling you that he always had the right answer. “It’s fear of success.”

I didn’t even know what to make of that, but I thought it was cool that Lou at least believed I could be successful as a writer. In his eyes, and in that moment, he didn’t think any of us were successful. He wasn’t wrong.

I changed subjects as quickly as I could, not wanting to continue a conversation confessing my dream job wasn’t remotely going to be in the field I was currently in.

Then, eight years later, he asked the same question.

Our company was bought out. While the new regime wanted me to stay, I knew immediately that I didn’t want to be there. After all, without Lou and Bob (my direct boss), it wouldn’t be the same place that I grew to love. I had begun my job search and got an offer from the first job I applied for.

Director of Infrastructure for the Chicago Tribune. If I weren’t a writer, at least I could support them.

I decided to ask Lou whether I should take it.

Lou returned to the same question he had asked me eight years ago and reminded me that I’d never answered it satisfactorily the first time.

“So, again, what do you want to do, kid?” he revisited. He always called me kid, even though he was like maybe ten years older than me. I found it endearing, but also wished I had earned enough respect for it to be gone.

I struggled to provide an intelligent answer. I instead went for what I thought was the right answer.

“I want to ultimately be a CIO.” I thought that would please him. By then, he had become my corporate hero.

“No, you don’t,” Lou replied, not missing a beat.

I started to refute that, but it was clear that he was going to provide another lesson, and it was always best to let the Lou freight train roll.

“How old is your kid, about two or three?” he asked.

“Two,” I said.

“And you want to spend time with him, coach him, be a better dad than yours was?” he asked, and I wondered how he knew (correctly) that I didn’t exactly grow up with the Father of the Year at home.

I knew where this was headed and realized I’d already lost.

“Here’s the thing, kid: I have no doubt you can do it, but it comes at a cost,” Lou continued. “You’re going to have to move, spend long hours at work, kiss the board’s ass, go from job to job, and do more of the kinds of things you probably hate now.”

And then he administered the kicker, “And your kids will hate you. Probably Mary, too.”

That seemed harsh, but I sensed he was speaking from experience.

All was not lost, however, as he did say, “My advice? Go for it regardless. Your kids are going to hate you anyway.”

Ouch.

With that bubble burst, he continued to tell me that I still had no idea about what I wanted to do.

He wasn’t wrong. I wished he were.

We continued to talk, and he still gave excellent advice on how I should approach the job offer. He held his arms straight out and explained one arm represented what I wanted and the other was what I had. The best I could aim for now was equilibrium, which of course was impossible since I was missing the “want” part of the equation.

While I eventually achieved some modicum of success, I never did nail down the want.

Until recently, when it became clear to me.

It really came down to the fact that I no longer wanted to wear long pants.

That was something the pandemic taught me. In the year and a half of working from home, I always wore gym shorts. Business up top, party down below, as they say. Pants became everything wrong with corporate life for me. I’m not one of those work from home zealots; in fact, I missed seeing my people in the office, but the simple act of wearing shorts throughout the year resonated for me.

In fact, the first thing I did every day when I got home was pants off, shorts on.

Truth is, there are not a lot of careers where you don’t have to wear long pants. Gym teacher is one, but I already tried teaching and didn’t even like the version that doesn’t require sweating.

Hence, writer.

Now, sometimes when I can’t fall asleep, I replay those two conversations with Lou. In my mind, he asks me that same question, but this time I know the answer.

“I want to be a writer because I just can’t see myself wearing pants anymore.” I state confidently, almost proudly.

He follows up on my fear of failure or success.

I tell him, “Who cares about success? A writer writes.”

Lou looks at me, puts his glasses down his nose as he always did when he focused on friend or prey.

“It’s about fucking time, kid.”

I still have to work on that kid thing.

But this time I’ll do it with shorts on.

We sat with the coaches and Eliot, and the head coach started by saying how great Eliot was as a person and athlete. Normal ice-breaking stuff. Everyone’s kid is great.

But it didn’t stop there.

“Eliot is amazing,” she continued, “I wish everyone on the team was like her.”

Agreed. The truth is Eliot was an incredibly smart, hard-working, awesome player and leader.

“I hope I have a daughter like her someday,” the coach offered, starting to embarrass Eliot a bit, but not too much, as Eliot has always been the apple of her coaches’ eyes.

“She has her moments,” I replied, using the same line I always used to not seem like one of those dads, even though I was.

Both coaches went on and on talking about her leadership, presence, work ethic, competitiveness, etc.

It was then that I asked what I thought was a simple question.

“So, what does she need to work on?”

Their answer was surprising.

“Not a thing,” was their response.

This caught us off guard.

“Nothing?” we replied.

“No, she’s perfect,” they continued, thinking that this would please us.

“There has to be something,” I continued, as I knew of at least two or three things that I thought she needed to work on.

“Nope. Practice, leading, fitting in, performance — all perfect,” they insisted.

Their next statement floored us.

“That’s why she’ll be the first person off the bench.”

You’ve gotta be kidding me.

It was one of those moments that I wish I could have back. It’s not as if this team was a powerhouse; in fact, it was slightly above mediocre with players who were more about the “me” than the “we,” and the team’s performance showed it.

We said nothing, and the meeting ended.

That was about the laziest conversation they could’ve had with us. Nothing to work on. No real feedback. Not a direct comparison in sight. No metrics. No goals. No path to starting.

Welcome, Eliot, to corporate performance management.

The truth is, I’ve heard such inane logic before.

At least twice a year, at mid-year and final performance evaluations.

You see, I spent the better part of almost two decades under a forced distribution system of ratings, where each leader was provided with a distribution that needed to be met across a ratings system from 1 (why haven’t you been fired yet) to 5 (OMG, give this person everything they want, except promotion).

To be fair, at every senior management meeting, the existence of the quota was denied, offering to the general populace that the practice was merely “guidance.”

Guidance that needed to be enforced.

Because math doesn’t lie.

It does, however, make us liars.

It also makes us poor leaders.

You see, in a perfect world, a ratings distribution has a lot going for it. It fights practices like rating inflation (no one’s baby is ugly), a lack of consistency across leaders and departments (you can’t possibly understand our challenges), and favoritism (they do things no one else can, like laugh at my jokes).

We don’t live in a perfect world.

That takes time, expertise, a focus on individuals, and, most importantly, leaders who can navigate such a world.

Who’s got time for that?

However, we always have time for organizational theater.

Senior management states that they trust their leaders’ judgment, just as long as you go back and adjust your ratings to fit within the mandatory guidelines (my least favorite oxymoron).

HR checks their box and congratulates itself on another successful ratings cycle.

Cutting cookies usually goes pretty smoothly.

In the meantime, leaders are questioned as to why David Doofus is still employed after his 121st mistake.

Duh, we have to keep our stable of Davids to properly reward our Susan Stellars.

(1 + 5) ÷ 2 = 3.

Average.

Math.

Fear not, HR pontificates that we all should be proud of that average rating (and subsequent average raise) because that means you’ve fully met the requirements of the job.

Nice work.

Now, David, go do some online training or something.

For those leaders who remain purists—coaching poor performers up or out, increasing the complexity of assignments for those hungry for growth, and providing honest feedback—well, this is the opportunity for some creativity.

Figure out some insignificant issue to drop your 4 to a 3.

Did they take a day off to see their kid graduate during crunch time?

Yes! There it is.

I love it when a plan comes together.

I’d like to tell you that management training is the answer. Companies spend billions of dollars every year training employees and developing leaders, but in a McKinsey survey of more than 500 executives worldwide, only 11 percent strongly agreed that their leadership-development efforts actually achieved and sustained the desired results.

On the surface, that sounds terrible until you realize the survey might have been measuring the wrong result.

Managers attended the training.

Box checked.

Success. They can’t wait to talk about it at the next town hall.

Now go figure out why your 4 is a 3.

Math.

The same math is used extensively to determine what it costs to deliver something. PowerPoint tells an epic tale of monetary success or opportunity.

It can even tell you how much was spent on leadership training.

It just can’t tell you if it worked.

All is not lost, however, as the leader who builds an excellent team of superstars will probably get more latitude in increasing their team size, which is awesome, as they’ll be able to stock up on some poor performers along the way.

Box checked.

Eliot spent that season coming off the bench behind a point guard whose turnovers exceeded her points. Eliot became the team’s third-leading scorer anyway. She earned all-conference honors the following two seasons. The team never went very far in the playoffs.

Given that, Eliot wasn’t a perfect player. She would even tell you that.

Too bad her coach didn’t.

Maybe it wasn’t Eliot who needed the development plan.

Mary and I were blessed to have an excellent support system when the kids were little. From babysitting for an evening out to having Grandma able to come over and watch for an entire weekend, we were able to keep a keen focus on our marriage.

This wasn’t by accident.

The truth is, I never cared whether we had kids or not. I knew Mary wanted them, so I always knew that we would try to have some, but I would have been just as happy if we didn’t.

This really didn’t go over well with my mom or the priest that administered pre-Cana (Mary’s idea, not mine), or one of our drunken party guests who seemed legitimately angry when I suggested I would have been just as happy without kids, as I would have no basis to know otherwise.

Simple logic confuses many.

When the magical clock struck biological 30 (actually 31), Mary and I discussed that it was time, and I had a few “requests” (demands would have been a little strong) that I felt were fair.

One date night a month minimum.

One weekend away per quarter.

I would never watch my language around them, eliminate what I watched on TV, and absolutely no baby talk. I was already 36 and too lazy to be someone I wasn’t.

Spoiler alert: they all grew up to be very successful. So there.

And, at the risk of my marriage, their first swear word was, “shit,” and that’s a Mary favorite.

Mary could get pregnant by me looking at her, and so we had two boys, Ben and Wyatt, in pretty quick order.

No real story there.

The child rules were in place and working fabulously.

Until Michael J. Fox had to open his mouth.

Mary and I were on a romantic getaway for Valentine’s Day at our favorite hotel, the Carleton of Oak Park, home of our favorite bar, Poor Phil’s, regularly attended when we were young, dating, and pretty poor.

What could go wrong?

It was at that great point in time after oysters, dinner, and a few drinks, and me assuring Mary that just being with her was enough and no romance was even necessary.

No judgement on my sincerity, please.

Mary wanted to talk to me about something.

Whoa.

We were on the couch just chilling when she was describing an interview she heard or read (can’t remember which) from Michael J. Fox, one of our favorite actors. The interviewer asked Fox why he and his wife decided on another child while he was battling Parkinson’s disease, rather heroically, to be honest with you.

Fox had explained that one day at the dinner table with their kids, he felt that someone was missing.

Fucker.

It took me about a nanosecond to know exactly what the next sentence would be out of Mary’s mouth.

“Someone is missing.”

Being forty at this point, what was missing was my plan to not be an older dad.

Every cynicism aside for the moment, there is nothing I wouldn’t do for Mary.

Negotiations began, not exactly the foreplay I was hoping for.

“But I’m already forty,” I offered.

Mary is five years younger than I am, so forty seemed ten years off for her.

Ignoring my plea, Mary cut to the chase and asked what I wanted to make this happen.

You have to be pregnant like now (unrealistic, but she got the gist).

I followed up with whether she would still want to try again if she miscarried. This was an important precursor to the next ask, although a bit dark.

“No,” she replied, not mad at all.

“Then the minute you’re pregnant, I’m getting a vasectomy.”

It was the least I could do.

Mary agreed.

My last request was about charting, graphing, temperature, predicting, blah blah blah. We had never done that, and I can’t imagine anything less sexy than that. If pregnancy happened, it happened.

Mary agreed.

That was the one she broke.

After two months of trying unsuccessfully, I found an index card on her dresser with dates.

Ugh.

That practice stopped pretty quickly when I explained that it was a cheat sheet to exhibit my worst behavior, knowing I was going to have sex anyway.

Don’t judge me; we’ve been happily married for nearly 36 years.

She agreed to stop charting, but coincidentally, and unbeknownst to us, she was already pregnant.

Mary discovered she was pregnant one day in May we happened to have an argument. All of our arguments are basically about nothing, so it wasn’t unusual as she strolled up to me in the yard where I was transplanting some flowers. I’m pretty sure I was wrong about this one, so I was surprised she made the first move.

“I’m pregnant,” she said like a woman who had been through this a couple of times before. We hugged it out.

Fight over.

The next day I made the appointment for my vasectomy.

Honestly, men who hesitate on this front are just plain selfish. It took less than an hour and was entirely painless. Mary was sick that day, so our friend Paula took me.

Paula also worked for me at the time.

For the record, she volunteered, but I can’t help but feel she left some money on the table somewhere in terms of a lawsuit.

Aunt Paula remains a close friend, so again, don’t judge.

Snip. Zap. Done.

Bag of peas and a weekend on the couch.

Unfortunately, I only followed half of that advice.

Feeling fine, I took Wyatt, only two, with me on a trip to Walmart. Wyatt was a particularly cantankerous baby, and the years didn’t improve that at all. He was sitting in the shopping cart, swinging his legs back and forth.

Fun fact: the length of his legs and the height of the cart perfectly aligned with my groin.

Direct hit.

I’m willing to bet Michael J. Fox listened to his doctors.

The result was a ruptured vein where ruptured veins shouldn’t be.

Ever.

Frozen peas weren’t the answer to this one.

Mary went with me to my ultrasound, stating it was the least she could do since I went with to hers.

I have little doubt that she was very pleased internally with that joke.

The ultrasound technician was very attractive, and no doubt experienced, as she introduced herself by saying, “Whatever you’re thinking of saying, I’ve heard it before.”

Apparently, I give off smart-ass vibes.

I, however, was really thinking about baseball.

If you know, you know.

Results showed a ruptured vein. I was offered two options: one, reverse the vasectomy and the blood might work its way out; two, suck it up, buttercup, and hope the pain would go away.

It didn’t. Not for two years.

No jeans and a lot of squirming on the loveseat, trying perpetually to get comfortable.

Since I chose the gut-it-out path, the only thing remaining was my fertility test. That was a simple drop-off of a “sample.” Ever the multitasker, I combined that with driving my ailing mom to one of her many doctor’s appointments in the same building.

Picking her up, I had 30 to 60 minutes before the sample officially became useless.

Under an hour to deliver the prize.

Go.

You wouldn’t think a simple paper bag would cause much fuss.

“What’s in the bag?” my mom asked as she got into the car.

Relax Columbo.

I said that I had to drop something off for a friend in the same building.

Not my best lie, and she wouldn’t give it up.

“What friend?”

“Why does it matter?” I deflected while squirming, only partially due to Wyatt’s handiwork.

“Are you sick?” She persisted.

“Sick of the questions,” I replied.

“Why won’t you tell me?”

“Ugh, it’s part of my fertility test after my vasectomy.”

“Stop being stupid; you would never mutilate yourself like that,” she replied impatiently. A devout Roman Catholic, apparently that was a no-no.

She gave me enough time to come up with a better lie.

“It’s a stool sample for my upcoming colonoscopy,” I explained.

Score.

“Why didn’t you just say that?” She was still pretty disgusted.

Uh, because Jesus already punished me by having my child kick me in the balls, ensuring I won’t ever wear jeans again.

I settled for, “It’s embarrassing.”

I eventually confessed when she was in a coma on her deathbed.

Closure and all.

All was well and good in the Dojutrek household until one day Mary was lying on the couch with Wyatt on her tummy. Ben and I were lying on the opposite loveseat watching television.

Wyatt and Mary jumped up a bit.

“Baby’s moving,” Mary explained.

She had a tight black shirt on, and Ben and I could literally see the baby’s head move from lower on Mary’s body to higher.

Foreshadowing.

And kind of gross. I was never the same with the notion of pregnancy since I saw the original Alien.

January rolled around, and my mom had gotten progressively ill. She had a fall and was brought into the emergency room. My sister and I were in the waiting room for about 11 hours while they determined whether to admit her. They eventually did.

I remarked to Penny, “How much do you want to bet that Mary has the baby today?”

Penny laughed.

After my mom was admitted, I went to our corporate holiday party at a local bar. Caremark always had its party in January because, you know, cheap.

I was tired and stressed, but after a few Guinness I felt better. My boss, Scott, wanted to continue the party elsewhere, and I reminded him that both his wife and Mary were due the same week.

This week.

Good judgement prevailed.

On my way home, I stopped at Dunkin Donuts for some coffee and donuts when I noticed my phone.

Six unanswered calls.

Two voicemails.

I had a shitty Caremark phone.

Because, you know, cheap.

“Hey sweetie, this is me. Um, having contractions, but they’re not too bad. Give me a call when you get a chance.”

You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me.

Called Mary’s sister and flew home.

We got everything ready and flew out the door to the hospital.

You know, the one with the speed trap.

The cop stopped us within sight of the hospital. As he took his time, I tried to get out of the car to speed things up, but the PA commanded, “Please stay in the car.”

He’d have let Michael J. Fox out of the car.

Who puts a speed trap by a hospital, anyway?

One very quick conversation later, we got to the ER.

Once there, we checked in and were brought to the delivery room.

Mary’s water broke, and it was go-time.

They were able to get her epidural in.

Natural childbirth is for science deniers.

Next time you have a tooth extracted, bypass the Novocain and do it “natural.”

Yeah, thought so.

The Guinness was hitting my bladder by this time, and I needed the nearest bathroom, so I used the one in Mary’s room.

She wasn’t amused as the doctor walked her there and asked, “Why is this door locked?”

Oops.

We waited a bit and were surprised it was taking this long. Mary was the popping-out baby champ, both previously two hours and under.

Then they told us that the baby’s trip around the tummy resulted in a breech position.

It was time for a C-section.

Being well past 11:00 pm, there wasn’t a lot of staff lounging about, but they put together a crew. Mary is a champion, so the role of the terrified, borderline vomiting person fell to me.

To my credit, I kept the vomit in.

Which is the opposite of what C-sections do with internal organs.

I’ll just leave it at that.

A few snips and staples later, we had a daughter.

Just like Michael.

Ain’t life grand?

The doctor’s assistant asked me our baby’s name. Mary and I previously agreed on Elliot, after Elliot Reid on Scrubs. Middle name was Parker, after Peter Parker.

So sue us.

“How do you spell that?” the assistant asked.

“E-l-i-o-t.”

Wrong—two “L” s.

Later, I would claim that this was intentional to guard against gender discrimination.

No one bought it.

“Come see your daughter,” the nurse told me.

The floor looked like a war zone.

“Can’t you bring her here?” I asked.

The nurse laughed and was cool about it.

Eliot Parker Dojutrek.

Not Esme Fox, but it was a fine name.

Then they asked me to help “smooth Mary out,” which apparently meant pushing her lower torso back into something resembling its original shape.

And me without my rolling pin.

Due to the C-section, they kept Mary and Eliot in the hospital for a few days. I was dividing my time between there and my mom’s who took a turn for the worse. This was especially hard for Mary, but she understood.

As they say in football, I out-kicked my coverage with her.

We brought little misspelled Eliot home and placed her in the bassinet in the sunny front room.

Wyatt was the first kid to greet her, running up to kick the bassinet and declare, “I hate my sister!”

Welcome home.

For a kid who hated his new sister, he was up with Mary and Eliot at every feeding, holding Mary’s free hand with one of his while using the other to suck his thumb.

They became inseparable as the months and years passed. Wyatt was still a bit moody, cantankerous, and a handful. I was frustrated, Mary was concerned, but Eliot could always reach him.

We started to refer to her as “The Wyatt Whisperer.”

Neither Mary nor I could reach him as Eliot could. Neither could Ben, who, being the oldest, was kind of doing his own thing.

They were always Wyatt and Eliot, thick as thieves.

As they got older and some things were made clear to us, it was always a handy narrative to say Eliot “saved” Wyatt. The truth was Wyatt didn’t require any saving.

He just needed a friend who got him.

Eliot saved Mary and me by reaching Wyatt in ways we could not.

That’s a hard realization for a parent to have.

It was hard for me.

Fiercely independent, today the youngest crabby old man works for Major League Baseball and was the first to move out on his own, a fact he is not shy about reminding us.

He watches baseball for a living, and his office is the ballpark.

I could not be more proud.

Or more jealous.

Eliot is currently in medical school working on her doctorate in physical therapy.

At Northwestern.

$250,000 Northwestern.

And Michael J. Fox nowhere to be found.

I had long hoped that professional change would be thrust upon me.

It finally came in the form of a meeting invite titled, “Manager Checkpoint 1.” The meeting was scheduled for 1:00 pm, during my boss’s direct reports meeting, which was odd enough. More curious was the location: 28.113—an entirely different set of elevator banks.

It was that detail that told me I was done.

It took me about 3 seconds to figure that one out. I texted him, “What’s this meeting about because it certainly feels like I’m getting whacked.”

Silence. I texted again with, “Your silence is deafening.”

That told me all I needed to know. The question, though, was why. If there is one thing corporate America doesn’t do well, it’s terminating someone because of performance issues. There’s usually a drawn-out improvement plan, and besides, I’d been rated “Exceeds” for years and had one of the biggest and most visible departments to run. A termination that quick could only mean a Code One violation.

I doubted I’d be the vanguard for the improvement of that process.

Sleeping with a subordinate? No.

Harassment of an employee? Nope.

Porn sites on my company computer? Nope.

Illegal kickbacks. Still no.

I was at a loss. To be fair, it never dawned on me that this was going to be a layoff of leaders throughout the organization. I had a pretty good information network in place, and I got nothing.

I ran it by a couple of trusted friends. They proved trustworthy by both agreeing that it sure seemed like I was done. Unnecessary validation, as I was now convinced I would be out. I was more mad that I didn’t see it coming.

I reached out to two of my directs who had worked for me for years, looking for their opinions. One in particular had a great info network, and all he could offer was, “Yeah, you’re cooked.” I actually found that to be a funny reply because I did know something that no one else there knew.

I was planning to “retire” in five months anyway.

You see, this wouldn’t be a tragedy for me, but more of a comedy.

Coincidentally, my oldest son Ben met me that day to grab a few beers at Monk’s Pub, a delightful dive blocks away from work. I let everyone in my family know through text what was going on. Ben knew that my passion for corporate jobs had been gone for a couple of years now. So he turned it into more of a celebration, asking, “How much severance will you get?”

I hadn’t even thought of that, but now I was. It was like the emails I got when I played the lottery online. “You are a winner,” is always the subject line, without a hint of whether it’s $4.00 or $22,000,000.

We were still at the bar when my boss finally texted me back.

“Randy, we’ll discuss at tomorrow’s meeting.”

There it was. As tacit a confirmation as he could make.

After Ben and I got back home, we had a family meeting. After joking about all the possible crimes I could have committed, Mary offered an alternative.

“Maybe you’re getting a promotion.”

Everyone but Mary laughed. God bless her.

I replied, “You can’t possibly be that dense.”

I explained that only two questions remained: one, what did I actually do; two, what severance would I receive?

That night I also texted my boss to let him know that I would be in a little later the next morning.

No way was I waking up early just to get whacked.

The drive into work was slow, as it always was. The day was sunny and warm—a good day for an execution.

I thought of Chris, a girl I’d briefly dated decades before. She was sweet, funny, and attractive, but we were intellectually incompatible. That sounds bad, but we just had different paths in life. She broke up with me at a Mr. Submarine shop. I knew it was coming, and in fact, I hoped it was. It may have been the easiest breakup of all time, and driving home, I was filled with a sense of giddy relief and endless possibility.

I felt the same way driving into work that day.

I should add that while Chris was breaking up with me, the TV mounted at Mr. Submarine was showing the live explosion of the space shuttle Challenger.

Perspective I didn’t really need.

Driving in, I started thinking, “What if Mary was right?” What if the meeting was an actual promotion? If I’m being honest, I had spent the previous fifteen hours getting excited about not having to work tomorrow.

I had promised myself I would become a full-time writer for so long that this final barrier removal had me giddy.

But what if Mary was right? That would suck on a couple of levels beyond the “I told you so” she would’ve deserved to deliver.

So I called her.

Given the importance of the day, she actually interrupted work to answer.

“Hey, if you’re right and this is a promotion, can I still retire today?” I asked.

“Of course,” she replied without hesitation. I’m guessing she was probably more excited that I allowed the possibility that she was right.

With that confirmation done, I now knew that this was it.

As a child, I wanted to be two things when I grew up: a marine biologist and a writer. The whole seasick thing killed the former; work had always been a convenient excuse to kill the latter. With that excuse about to go away, I was out of obstacles, and that was a bit terrifying.

It still is.

It was almost too perfect that on the Old National Bank sign I looked forward to passing every morning, the display read, “Today is National Punctuation Day. Period.”

Very subtle God.

I arrived in the garage at about 10:00-ish. On my way in, I saw another Executive Director walking out carrying a box.

“How’s it going?” I asked.

“It’s an interesting day,” was her reply.

There it was. Management layoff. One question down. I had done nothing wrong.

My knowledge that I was done for afforded me the luxury of meeting with each direct to let them know what was going on, which was needless because news of the layoffs traveled faster than I did. Some reacted with sadness; others with anger.

One of my peers bemoaned, “Now I need to find a new frenemy.”

A few of my close friends invited me to lunch next door. They dubbed it “The Last Supper,” with my friend Dave even looking away à la Judas during the selfie we took.

I love these guys.

During lunch, Christy asked me whether I had used all my Stellar Awards points, a bonus gift program that allows me to receive and distribute gift certificate points.

Shit, I hadn’t.

I rushed back to my desk and started distributing. While I had been emotionally done with the company for a while, I did love my team and many of the people I had worked with over the years.

It took some creativity to come up with reasons other than, “I love you,” for these point descriptions.

Doing this last act of recognition, not to mention spending corporate dough, made me 10 minutes late for my 1:00.

What would they do, fire me?

I rushed into the room where my boss and a person unknown to me were sitting. Clearly, they outsourced the HR piece to a consulting firm, which I felt okay with. Bad enough my boss, whom I still consider to be my friend, had to do it, much less another person I may have known and liked.

Although my list of friends in HR was considerably smaller than elsewhere.

I sat down and asked, “Long day, huh?”

They stared back blankly. Looking back, I wish I would’ve said, “Ready for my promotion.”

I had been on the opposite side of these things long enough to know that my boss’s role was to read from an increasingly frayed index card, very carefully written dialogue devoid of sympathy or emotion.

We can’t have that.

While he executed this flawlessly, I knew him well enough to know that it hurt. He left, forbidden even to offer good luck.

I was not fired, as the card read, but rather my position had been eliminated due to “corporate efficiencies.”

Fuck you.

The HR person was very young, mid to late twenties at best, and proceeded to read from her script. It had to suck to begin your career by ending others.

She covered severance, and as I hoped and prayed, it was generous. Two weeks for every year. 18 years times 2 weeks came out to 36 weeks of pay.

Score.

No March bonus—boo.

Unemployment compensation—yay.

If someone could speak in bullet points, she did, covering health insurance, blah, blah.

I felt bad for her, so used my most cheerful voice to indicate I understood. It seemed to lighten the mood a little. I told her that I was planning on leaving anyway, so this wasn’t that big a deal. While her job clearly didn’t allow her to react, I hoped it at least was a nice break in the day for her, someone happy to receive her reading of the script.

She continued to lay out all the other details, most of which continued to be unimportant to me, and then asked whether she needed to accompany me to clear out my desk. I indicated that this was already done, and it seemed to ruin the surprise aspect of the day. I indicated I was fine and ready to roll. She walked me to the elevator, where we waited in uncomfortable silence. I decided to break the silence with questions I really didn’t care much about, but realizing small talk was not allowed, it had to be business.

“I have a couple of questions,” I said. She was taken aback a bit, even though no one was waiting with us, and replied, “Sure.” Her discomfort was palpable.

No script for this one.

I asked her some termination questions that I really didn’t care about, but it at least filled the time.

I was a little surprised when she replied, “I’m not sure. It should probably be in your agreement package.” These weren’t rocket science questions, and she should have known the answers.

This marked my last review of someone as a corporate professional.

B minus.

As the elevator was taking forever, I tried to lighten the mood; at least that’s what I’m telling myself now, as I cannot completely dispel the possibility that I was just being an asshole.

“What if I just started running around the halls?”

With only a bit of panic in her voice, she offered, “Well, I hope you wouldn’t do that.”

I laughed. “Of course not.” I was really hoping she would say something like, “I’d tackle your unemployed ass.”

We got to the main floor, where she sheepishly asked for my badge.

“Oh, of course, but can I keep the lanyard?” I asked, really not knowing why.

“Uh, I guess.”

She then offered, “Thank you for being so professional.”

I was trying to determine whether there was a hint of sarcasm in her voice, but I like to think she was being sincere.

On the other side of the gates, many of my leaders and friends waited for me.

I thought that was sweet and very gratifying.

My friend John asked, “Why does it seem like you’re the only one not sad today?”

I recounted what transpired as well as the fact that no one should worry, as I had long determined that I was done and was going to leave, regardless.

We reminisced a bit, joked around a bunch, with me trying to lighten the mood. My last gift to them.

A few minutes passed, and it became small talk, and you all know how I feel about small talk. Hugs were exchanged, maybe a little eye mistiness, and we all promised to stay in touch.

My favorite part is that it mostly came to pass.

I tossed the lanyard into the trash can on my way out. I was meeting Eliot for a function at her alma mater. I was blaring “Little Victories,” a song from our favorite television show, Scrubs.

If you know, you know.

I recounted the day’s events with Eliot when she decided to challenge my good mood.

“Aren’t you sorry you didn’t get to go out on your own terms?”

I love this kid.

“Not 36 weeks of pay worth” was my reply.

Period.

Turns out, every Labor Day would be his.

A music lover, he was finally making the jump from vinyl to CDs, and his plan was to enlist me to buy and install a CD player. I knew this was going to be an all-day affair, as it always was when I was needed for remedial electronic installation. While it certainly fed my ego when any of my siblings needed something, this request carried with it an additional burden—I couldn’t stand my brother.

We had a long and complicated relationship that was barely functional and rarely good.

Not exactly the way to spend a holiday.

Fifteen years my senior, legend has it that he doted on me when I was first born, calling me “Ramey” and proudly walking me across the neighborhood, showing off his little brother. I can assure you that I have no memory of this, but if I had, I’m guessing those memories would have been overwritten by the years of verbal abuse I took growing up in the same house with him.

That I remember.

There was no love lost between Doc and our mom. It occurred to Doc that I was Mom’s parental reclamation project (a project usually saved for grandchildren), and as a result, I became an extension of her, with all the bile and venom he had for her now directed at me.

Yay.

But the years passed, and Doc and I got to the point of mutual disinterest.

Except, of course, when anything from Best Buy was involved.

Driven by my sense of pride that I was nothing like him, I even bought him a CD of Linda Ronstadt’s Greatest Hits. It contained the song “Desperado”, a song he confessed summed up his life.

That figures.

I picked him up at his very dark, cramped apartment. It was actually not that small, but he was a pack rat extraordinaire. Piles of books, albums, old electronics, even older furniture, and, of course, his stuffed bass. His great love was fishing, and while he caught larger fish in his lifetime, he loved fishing for bass the most. That particular bass was his crowning achievement.

He also bitched and moaned about how much it cost to stuff.

He also never mounted it on his wall, instead leaning it against his wall on a pile of National Geographic magazines.

One must remember that hammers are a form of technology.

I handed him a bag of tomatoes fresh from our mother’s garden.

Because, you know, Polish moms are like that.

His hatred of her did not extend to free produce, and as an accomplished cook, he would put them to good use.

Eager to get this over and done with, after some small talk, I sized up the situation. The greatest risk would be the collapse of his wall unit on me as I maneuvered the hookups.

The wall unit was easily a couple of decades old and probably still at the low end of a Chicago Public School teacher’s salary.

Yes, my semi-functional alcoholic brother with anger issues was shaping America’s future.

One quick trip to Best Buy and a prolonged conversation about getting what you pay for and the need for cables later, we were back at the apartment and in business.

With a little help from my brother, and I can only guess God, the entertainment center held and the CD player was live.

Then I magnanimously presented him with my gift—his first CD.

“Why this one?” he asked. “My favorite album is Tea for the Tillerman by Cat Stevens.”

Now how the fuck would I know that?

Eager to leave no strings attached, we went back to where I bought it and exchanged Linda for Cat.

Back at his morgue, I was ready to go home, ready to salvage the remainder of Labor Day.

“I feel bad. Let me make you dinner,” he insisted. “No one cooks like I do.”

Ugh.

Against my better judgment, I agreed.

We sat out on his balcony, five stories up. He cooked a couple of steaks on a tiny Smokey Joe grill. It pains me to say that I’ve had few better.

He opened some wine. Usually a safe haven. For a lifetime alcoholic, he wasn’t a very good drinker. Beer and wine were generally okay. Whiskey brought the hatred out. A lifetime of drink management at holidays taught me this.

I was even occasionally successful.

He put on Tea for the Tillerman and we settled in with the wine.

We spent hours on that balcony just talking about life, experiences, good things, bad things, religion, his sadness, our dad, siblings, music, movies, and everything two brothers could talk about over wine.

Our mother never came up.

I got a glimpse of what having an older brother might feel like.

It was perfect.

And sad.

But for the first time in a long time, there were more laughs than anger.

Multiple glasses of wine and albums later, it was time to go.

We hugged it out, and I went downstairs to my car.

He was still on the balcony as I made my way to the car. A large splat occurred about five feet away.

It was one of our mom’s tomatoes.

Doc laughed, “You’re lucky it’s dark out.”

I replied, “Pus arm.”

Doc died earlier this year. A stroke.

I went to the Florida condo he shared with his girlfriend, Kathy.

While she tried to give me so many of his things, the one thing I wanted was his bass.

Hammer in hand, I mounted his bass above the doorway to my home office, next to a crystal that’s supposed to bring peace.

You’re welcome, Doc.

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I was really looking forward to relaxing on a Sunday afternoon a few years ago. Work was a pain in the ass, and the Oscars were just the distraction I needed. I was going to do it up right: take a nice hot shower, whip up some appetizers, a cold martini, and enjoy whatever inevitable controversy the awards would provide. Nothing like sitting around in a robe with a charcuterie tray and a martini to convince myself I was living the good life.

I never made it to that chair.

During my shower, I got a little lightheaded (insert joke here) and felt a twinge in my left shoulder, not unlike when you pinch a nerve. I was in the middle of what I call a lobster shower—water so hot that it cooks me. I figured the hot water was making me a bit lightheaded, nothing a quick lie-down and air dry wouldn’t cure. As for the arm, it felt a bit better just stretching it. Shower over.

And then my leg stopped working.

I went to step out with my left leg and it just hovered in the air. Stepping out of the shower is not what I would consider a complex move, so my foot apparently not willing to plant itself came as a bit of a surprise. Kids not listening, I was used to, but my body, not so much.

I leaned forward to force the issue, and while the foot planted, the leg felt a bit numb. I stepped to the counter with my right leg, and that was fine. Countered with the left and more hovering. Not only that, my arm was hurting, but more on the inside as it felt a bit numb on the outside. I took a safety pin that was lying around and poked my shoulder with it. Nothing. Okay, that was disconcerting.

I asked myself, “Am I having a heart attack?”

I threw on some clothes and slowly navigated the stairs where Mary and the kids were hanging out waiting for the Oscars (but probably more for the charcuterie). By all accounts, I looked okay, but stated, “I think I need to go to the ER.”

A quick description later, sans the heart attack theory, and Mary and I were off to the ER, about 2 miles away.

If there was an upside to the trip, it was that Mary learned her lesson about ER transportation. Years back, and in immense pain, I’d asked her to get me to the ER as quickly as possible. Even though it was about 3:00 am, Mary, ever the conscientious driver, stopped at the red light even though there wasn’t a car in sight. All I could say at the time was, “Are you kidding me?”

I began to worry that this time she did not hesitate. I was calm, but clearly she had seen something I hadn’t, and sensed this time it wasn’t a kidney stone.

Although I am not a religious man, I figured I’d throw a quick prayer out to the Holy Trinity just in case.

If Mary’s urgency wasn’t freaky enough, the ER receptionist not having me fill out paperwork or wait to be called did the trick. They put me in a wheelchair and wheeled me past a full waiting room. That couldn’t be good.

I heard an announcement over the PA: “Stroke team east corridor.”

Fuck.

Moved to a gurney, moments later I had a whole medical team looking at me, including someone on a laptop.

“Smile,” I heard. It didn’t feel like a smiling moment. I gave them a grin. “Please smile with your teeth,” they instructed. I hate my teeth, but gave them one anyway.

“Left side droopiness of the mouth,” they stated, not for me but for the team. It dawned on me that I was now part of a checklist.

“Yeah, I’m not keen on my smile,” I offered.

Crickets. “Tough crowd,” I thought.

Then the barrage of questions began.

“Are you on blood thinners?” No.

“Did you hit your head?” No.

“Have you taken any drugs?” No, but I sure could use some now.

“Have you ever suffered a stroke?”

Apparently now.

It’s amazing how little humor there was in getting that checklist done.

After one CT scan, they told me I had a bleed in my brain. However, it was only the size of a peanut, they explained.

Peanuts come in all fucking sizes. Spanish peanut? Walnut? Cashew? Pistachio?

They then made a little circle with their fingers and, I’ll be honest with you, I never saw a peanut that size. I was calm enough to be irritated by a terrible metaphor.

So, it was a stroke. They were going to put me in the ICU and scan me every few minutes to see whether it was growing, necessitating drilling into my skull.

Okay, well that would suck.

It was at that time that I offered up that my dad had died from a stroke. Actually, he had three, but to be fair, he wasn’t the poster child for healthy living: diabetes, high blood pressure, drinking, smoking, and all.

And no, I’m still not on blood thinners. Jesus.

Fortunately, the mythical peanut was not growing, much to my relief.

Mary and I settled into the ICU, and I was hooked up to a multitude of machines. I have to say, I was pretty calm. To her credit, Mary was too. It’s amazing what finding out you don’t need your skull drilled will do for your attitude.

Shit, I forgot to tape the Oscars. I asked Mary to text the kids and ask them to.

She didn’t. Sigh.

Hours passed, with my sole distraction being the hourly blood thinner question, and having to identify simple pictures by name: dog, cloud, kite, kid. Happy to say I passed with flying colors. I could be president.

Finally, closer to morning, they gave me the diagnosis. I had a bleed in the brain, but it wasn’t growing. No idea how it got there. Not sure what the damage was yet.

And no, I’m still not on blood thinners. Dog, cloud, kite, kid.

At this point, I could feel everything, and was apparently cogent, so I slipped into problem-solving mode. First, let the kids know I’m not dead. Assignment: Mary.

To avoid alarming them, Mary texted them that I had a “brain bubble.” True-ish, I guess, and it actually sounded kind of cute.

I texted my boss. I had to call in sick with a stroke. I kind of liked the shock value. He texted me back whether I wanted him to join me in the ICU so Mary could get some sleep. While I appreciated the offer, the last thing I wanted was to talk about work. It would probably give me another stroke. I declined his offer and would never forget his kindness. Now that’s a boss.

Given that the plan was now recovery and release, I convinced Mary to go home. Besides, they wouldn’t let her help on the mental cogency test.

Dog, cloud, kite, kid. And no, I still haven’t taken any fucking blood thinners.

I took to social media to let everyone know of my condition and that I was okay. Of course, I used the term “stroke,” which came as a surprise to my daughter when her friend let her know I actually had a stroke, and not a cute little brain bubble. She blamed me for not getting an A on her next period test, crying and all, but I think she just didn’t study enough.

The next several days brought more tests. Still no cause.

I had some guests in the ICU. Some surprising, some not so surprising. Surprised by some who didn’t show. One of my buddies texted me afterwards to relay that he was relieved that I didn’t look nearly as bad as he thought I would.

Glad to help.

I have to say, though, that the best part of the ICU was the device they strapped to both my calves to prevent blood clots. Alternating pressure on both calves was like having a 24-hour massage without the eucalyptus scent or the small talk. The minute they shoot this out to retail, I’m a buyer.

Four days in the ICU gave me a lot of time to think. . I had a fucking stroke. I was nowhere near the mess my dad was in, but Jesus Christ, there wasn’t a cause. I took that to mean that at any time I could have another one. While they assured me that wasn’t really the case (emphasis on “really”), it was small comfort. I was pretty proud that I never freaked out. Honestly, not once.

They finally released me. My walking came back, but I maintained a slight droop line on my mouth. No biggie. At least I could see Eliot play basketball that night.

Dr. Buzzkill told me not yet, furthering my theory that basketball was the cause. Not really, but I thought it would be funny to tell Eliot.

I was wrong.

I had some friends come by to keep me company while Eliot played basketball. I appreciated them spending some time with me late on a work night until it dawned on me that this was more of a “Let’s make sure he doesn’t die on us while Mary isn’t home” visit.

The fact that I had to make small talk was a dead giveaway. I was more than a little tired, and I’m not a fan of small talk anyway.

Regardless, I love them to death for it, and I’m glad I didn’t die making small talk.

That would’ve pissed me off.

Weeks passed, and the brain was starting to get to whatever normal was. Waffle fries tasted like maple syrup. Everything felt like sandpaper to my left hand, even cold running water. That was freaky. In the best tradition of software development, I decided these were not bugs, but features.

Also got to blame everyone for the stroke. I told my boss it was work-related. I told Mary it was marriage-related. I told Eliot it was basketball-related. Unfortunately, my workday never got easier; I didn’t get more sex, and Eliot still never developed that killer first step. Sigh.

My neighbor was nice enough to have snow-blown my walk a few weeks later after a heavy snow. Talking to him from my front porch wearing only a t-shirt and shorts, he asked whether I was cold. I thought about it and realized that I no longer felt cold on my left side. Sweet fucking origin story!

Six months later, I had a follow-up with a neurologist. I can’t really say, “My neurologist,” as I hadn’t seen her before and, spoiler alert, never needed to see her again, but in healthcare terms, she was my neurologist.

After a brief and cold introduction, she asked me what my understanding was of “my situation.”

Peanut-sized brain bleed. Stroke. No known cause. No blood thinners.

“Are you on blood thinners now?” she asked.

“Still no,” I replied. Honestly, maybe I’m missing out on them.

“I don’t know about the peanut-sized bleed, but you suffered major damage,” she explained, pulling up my latest CT scan. She pointed at what could best be described as a darker gray cloud that covered a fair bit of territory.

Peanut my ass.

“You were actually very lucky. Here is where speech is, and here is where some major cognition is done,” she went on. “Whatever effects you’re experiencing now are much better than what could have been.”

I went on to describe what I was experiencing, stressing the bright side that I didn’t eat waffle fries all that much. The sandpaper was a bit annoying, though. As for the cold, if I could keep that, that’d be great.

At least that got me a smile. She definitely had more personality than the stiffs in the ER.

“Think of your brain like a highway system,” she explained. “You travel a certain route every day to work. Something happens and now you have a detour. After taking the detour every day, even when the construction clears, you like the new route and stay with that. That’s your brain.”

I got it, but still asked, “Meaning?”

“What you have after a year, you’ll most likely have forever,” she replied.

“Forever” bothered me. I don’t mind having a habit I carry forever. I promised to be with Mary forever. I hadn’t gone to church in forever. The doctor’s “forever,” however, wasn’t a choice; it was chosen for me.

For the first time since the stroke, I was a little pissed off.

But at who? At what? I have always been much more comfortable being mad than scared, so that was the “route” I chose.

The doctor admitted that since they didn’t have a cause, there was nothing much any of us could do in terms of prevention. She gave me some pamphlets on early warning signs and sent me on my way.

About a week or two after that, my family doctor proposed a theory that I might’ve had Covid and didn’t know it. He tested if I had it previously, but I didn’t, making me probably the only human to regret not having contracted Covid.

On the positive side, waffle fries went back to normal, as did the sandpaper hand. My stroke line stayed, but since I didn’t like my smile anyway, who cares? The imperviousness to cold on my left side stayed, a useful quality to have in Chicago, one that I always bra

g about.

The downside of not knowing where this stroke came from is not knowing if it will ever happen again. I don’t find that scary as much as I find it annoying. I’ve never been comfortable with medicine being as much art as science, so the pamphlets weren’t much help.

I got why my dad died from a stroke. It was his third without ever changing his lifestyle a bit. I really want to say he deserved it, but the last one was a slow, sad march to death. No one deserves that. Certainly not me.

But sometimes shit just happens.

Not very profound, but what can you expect from someone who’s brain-damaged?

Belying the fact that he was one of the brightest technical people I ever met, Ron was a big, burly guy who looked like he would be more comfortable in the Northwoods than the North Shore. His size, assertiveness, and communication style made every interaction feel like bullying, or maybe that’s what I just wanted to see.

When my maturity eventually caught up with my advancement, I realized that he was just being his authentic self. Unfortunately, at the time, so was I.

Ron and I were at odds over one of his areas that was chronically underperforming, resulting in several high-profile outages. I felt that I could turn it around if moved to my area. He was not fond of that idea and, after bellowing at me for about an hour, he called a meeting with his peers and the CIO, Lou, to discuss it.

I was more than ready for the meeting, possessing a strategy for the department that was undeniably an improvement. The issue was organizational structure, not technical ability. My plan addressed all of this.

Ron didn’t disagree with the plan, but it was clear that his issue was with me leading the change.

Ron argued, “Why would you lead this department when you’re not a technologist?”

Ron left me the opening I was looking for.

“Well, you’re the most technical person in the company, and how is that working out for us?” I replied. “It can’t get worse.”

There were several ways I could have explained that the issue was organizational structure rather than technology. I chose the cheap shot.

The department was moved to me. I won.

The following day, Lou approached and asked, “Feeling pretty good about yourself after yesterday, huh?”

“I did,” I replied, “because the outcome was not only what I wanted, but the right way to go.”

As Lou often did, he burst my bubble.

“You’re an idiot,” he replied. “You might’ve gotten what you wanted, but you made an enemy of a person you’ll need to collaborate with for years.”

I hadn’t yet developed the skill of letting Lou’s words sink in before replying.

“It was the right move,” I countered.

Lou replied with the impatience of a parent whose kid isn’t getting it.

“Yeah, everyone knew it was, but you couldn’t help yourself—you had to show you were the smartest person in the room.”

The subsequent years proved Lou right. Ron fought me on everything, right or wrong, until he eventually left the company a couple of years before I did.

I fell victim to my ego, but I now see that my confidence was masking my insecurity. Ron gave me a shot, so I needed to give him two. I was so eager to belong in that room, I proved that I didn’t.

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Thirty-plus years of marriage has taught me more about human nature and leadership than any MBA program, TED Talk, or self-help book ever could. I’m just grateful my wife, Mary, never charged me for it.

My youthful arrogance convinced me I could change my wife. Not that she needed changing. In fact, I married a woman way out of my league. There were, however, little things she did that drove me crazy.

One of these was her habit of using cheap ballpoint pens, which was bad enough. But she would play with the cap clip by bending it upward or, worse, lose the cap by not putting it on the other end of the pen while writing. Our office was full of dried-out pens without caps and others with clips bent perpendicular to the pen.

Admittedly, it was a little thing, but if you know me, it’s these little things that drive me crazy.

In trying to get her to change, I first appealed to her love for me. She looked at me and said, “If that’s the biggest complaint you have in this marriage, you’re a lucky man.”

The cap bending continued.

Then I appealed to her frugality, showing that it was a waste of pens and money. She opened her desk drawer and showed me a dozen packages of pens, pointing out that she had stockpiled them during back-to-school sales.

“Bic. 12 for 88 cents,” she proudly declared.

The pen cap genocide continued along with my protestations.

It wasn’t until I caught her doing something that brought the entire issue into clear focus. I was planning on scaring her while she was grading some papers (I was bored) when I saw her taking pens from the cup where we stored them, bending some caps and throwing out others.

Simultaneously brilliant and disturbing.

My attempts to change her caused a bad habit to morph into pen terrorism.

I couldn’t even change my bad habits. Why did I ever think I could change hers? Or anyone’s, for that matter.

I cannot tell you how many times I’ve had coffee with someone over the years, lending my ear to complaints about someone else’s behavior, whether personally or professionally.

“Why are they doing it this way?”

“Why don’t they see what I see?”

“Why are they behaving this way?”

Most of these were legitimate gripes, some even maddening, but for all my sympathy, empathy, and understanding, I had nothing for them. After all, I couldn’t even get my wife to stop killing innocent pens, and as I recall from our vows, she promised to love me forever.

“Why can’t they do it the way I would?”

And there it is—clearly we do it right. My seven-cent Bic pen would last forever if properly maintained.

We want people to do things the way we do, and the only person we have complete control over is ourselves. And to be honest with you, that bugged the shit out of me for a long time.

There is a great scene from the underrated movie Zero Effect, where the brilliant but paranoid detective Bill Pullman bemoans the actions of “bad guys.” His exasperated assistant Ben Stiller shoots back, “There are no good guys! There are no bad guys. They’re just guys!”

Vilifying my wife for her intentional slaughter of pens may have been a bit of an overreaction.

I would not win this fight, or as the late, great Patrick Swayze tried to tell me in Road House (the Citizen Kane of bad movies), “Nobody wins a fight.”

Over the years, I learned to influence rather than control, like a good little leader, taking anger and frustration out of the equation. However, like Swayze’s Dalton, I can still kick some rhetorical ass when needed. It rarely works on Mary, but after thirty-plus years, she pretty much knows I’m full of shit.

As for the pen caps, when I realized that I wasn’t going to win, I just flooded the house with better-quality retractable pens.

Problem solved.

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