I've gone to the movies twice in the past 20 years: Dances with Wolves and Coach Carter. I'm told I also took the kids and a good portion of the neighborhood to The Lion King one Saturday afternoon.
I don't remember that, and that sounds like something every man I know would remember. So until there is a breakthrough in retrieving repressed memories, I'm sticking to 20 years, two movies.
I don't go the movies for two simple reasons: Movies cost more than a rebuilt transmission. And they stink.
Frankly, I keep waiting for Hollywood
OK, I know what you're doing. You're sitting there trying to recall all the movies you've seen lately, and you're saying to yourself: "Who made you Siskel and Ebert? Suchandsuch was darn good."
I'm not disputing that. With the exception of your choosing to read this column whenever it happens to appear, I trust your judgment. I bet Suchandsuch is good. Maybe even darn good. But a person has to wade through a lot of swamp to reach that ground. I don't have the patience. Or the disposable income.
Which brings me to my wife's office Christmas party the other evening. Maybe you've played this game, too. First, everyone brings a gift. Then, everyone draws a number. When your number comes up, you either can open a gift, or you can steal one that already has been opened and watch the face of the person who had that gift instantly go from glad tidings to mad tidings. Tip: Before starting this game, put all butter knives and blunt objects (fruitcakes, wooden nutcrackers, etc.) away.
At my wife's office Christmas party, most of the gifts already had been opened when it was finally my turn. There was a pair of movie tickets, which, now you know, could just as well have been a box of bath beads or anything bearing a Minnesota Vikings logo. They were safe from me for all eternity.
So were the handmade coasters. Not because I didn't want them. I did. They were marvelous coasters, beautifully crafted. With coasters like that, beer wouldn't have to be served in a glass. You could just leave it in the can.
Honestly, I wanted the coasters most of all. But I couldn't steal them. Nor could you have either if you had observed the smile of the young dental assistant who had taken the coasters when it was her turn to open a gift. I hadn't seen a person that satisfied since Tiny Tim on Christmas Day.
So I took the next best gift: A 20-dollar bill taped to a Kit Kat bar.
There were other great gifts I could've stolen. But I took the 20-dollar bill taped to a Kit Kat bar because alone, cash and candy are fine and wonderful things. But together? Something tells me if there had been a fourth wise man, he would have been carrying this.
My wife and her colleagues – like most people who live in this part of the world – work at a small business. In 2009 small businesses in America
So what did the people who work at these businesses do? They paddled even harder.
You have to admire their heart.
Small businesses get neither the headlines nor the political favors big businesses in America
But those who own and those who work at small businesses often have something the others don't: a greater sense of shared purpose and – with it – a deeper willingness to sacrifice that only can come at a place where the name on the sign out front belongs to one of the people who work there every day.
You don't discover much about a person in still waters. It takes a heavy wind before you know how well they're built, how tightly they're bond.
This week there will be more office Christmas parties. If you happen to be at one, you'll find plenty of food and plenty of laughter and maybe even a gift or two. But you'll also discover something else: people who can weather the wind.
When you leave that evening, they are what you'll remember most of all.
To them, not even a 20-dollar bill taped to a Kit Kat bar can compare.