Waking with Friends

I took the trash today. One of the perks, (assuming that it's really a perk at all), of owning a business is that you get to mooch services - such as trash pick up - from your place of work. After all, I'm essentially paying for the removal of the dumpster each week, why pay an additional $50 per month for service at home? It is a small thing, but I nonetheless feel as though I'm winning in a strange sort of way ... beating the system, if you will.

Aside from not having a scheduled "trash day" and instead procrastinating the task until a full load of garbage fills the garage with unfavorable aromas, there is another downside to having this little "perk". With no Sanitation Engineers to handle the grunt work, there is much more involved in emptying the garbage than simply rolling a can to the edge of the driveway. You actually have to empty the cans - bag after bag - into the back of a pickup truck and then unload the same cargo into the dumpster. This, obviously, offers a dual potential to experience a close contact with the very items that you had previously thought too gross to keep around.

With that understanding forefront in your mind, you'll better appreciate how I came upon the great thought that graced me today. I was emptying the bags from my truck bed when the inevitable happened; I inadvertently poked a thumb through the side of a bulging bag and immediately felt it slide into a mess of unknown goo. Noting that I splurge when it comes to trash bags - these were the Glad StretchFlex brand - this type of thing is much more rare than you might expect. However, I'm no stranger to the circumstances surrounding the occasional thumb-rupture and it pretty much happens the same way every time. The first thought to enter your mind is, I wonder what I just stuck my thumb into?

Immediately your mind races to recall all of the possible discards from the past week. What items could my family have thrown away that would have the consistency and feel of warm peanut butter? Could it be spent cooking lard or bacon fat? Unlikely, considering the amount of time that any of us actually spend cooking. Perhaps peanut butter? But why would anyone throw away peanut butter? You'd eat peanut butter and toss the jar, right? Having a child in the house still at the age of using Pull-ups, the answer was relatively obvious as my mind searched for other, less nauseating alternatives. I thought of looking, but ultimately I decided that there was no benefit in knowing. Whatever it was, it was going to be gross and I'd still have to wash my hand thoroughly before proceeding with my day. Looking would only verify the level of grossness and contribute to a conscious avoidance of that thumb for the next 24-hours. Finally, I did the only thing that a man can do in this position. I tossed the bag into the dumpster and, without looking, wiped my thumb on my jeans. To hell with it.

A couple of days ago a friend of mine was downsized. Not the product of a successful bout with Jenny Craig and no, he didn't do the finger in the throat thing after every meal. Instead, he was the victim of a company that is going through that "trimming the fat" stage and unfortunately saw him as fat. I was devastated to get the word from him, although knowing him as I do, he'll end up in a much higher position elsewhere very soon.

It was in an e-mail communication from him yesterday that he made an interesting comment, however, that I had to respond to after sticking my thumb in the crap. He had said that he was getting calls from fellow industry professionals inquiring about his well-being and mentioned that it was like being dead and attending your own wake. "I can see," he said, "who my true friends are and who was only befriending me for my position at the company". I thought about that and realized that, while knowing who your friends are, there are perhaps times that you are better off not knowing.

My personal experience in this was when I left radio. After spending 8-years in one form of on-air broadcast or another, it seemed that everyone was personally connected to me. I couldn't walk through the local Wal-Mart without spending at least 30-minutes talking with people who were just sure that I was their best buddy in the world, only to walk away time and time again not knowing where the hell I had seen them before ... or if I ever had. It was everywhere; people who knew me, people who liked me and people who wanted me for one reason or another.

Upon leaving the industry and stepping far away to open my own business, I suddenly found myself living another person's life. Where I was accustomed to people coming to me constantly, thinking that I was the person in demand, I quickly found myself meeting new people every day who were leery of me as I tried to sell them something. The roles had been reversed. I was the one coming up to people and trying to become their best friend and I could see that same "do I know you" look in their eyes that had clouded mine for so long. All of a sudden, I had no friends. It was like floating above that wake and looking down, only to see that nobody had shown up.

Knowing my friend as well as I do, and being familiar with the all-encompassing hours that he kept with the company, I was immediately worried that he too would find himself in that position. Except with him, it was not by choice. I hated the comment that he had made as I worried that by disassociating with the professional friends that he had kept - writing them off as only "business friends" - he would unintentionally outcast himself from everyone that he knew and find himself focusing on an empty wake rather than looking ahead to the great next step in his career.

Fortunately, having talked to this friend at length on the phone, I realized that I was crazy to think that he'd ever have such a problem. He's already leaving the country on a two-week long vacation before getting to the business of hunting jobs. And, he's already got two offers in the wait. Good for him.

That having been said, I recently was invited to a reunion at the radio station I left more than a decade ago. Having been gone from the industry for so long, I didn't quite know what to expect, but upon arriving, it was like coming home. The hugs and the smiles; the kisses and the actual tears from one of the office ladies was quite a sight. Many of the listeners were in attendance as well, and most hung around asking questions and conveying how much they missed the show even to this day. All of that made me realize that many of those whom I had so easily allowed myself to fall out of touch with, truly did miss me as an individual. Many of them, I now remember, even did try to call me at some point. Others claimed that they just couldn't because they were too hurt by my decision to leave, but didn't want to make me feel bad for having made it. I realized then that those friendships were as strong as any other. It was my own insecurity that had caused me to write off those people as not having been "real" friends. The people I reunited with that day didn't want an association with the popular morning show guy and they weren't after tickets to some upcoming concert. They simply found joy in reuniting with a long lost friend.

Sometimes, I guess, floating above your own wake isn't the best indication of who your true friends are. Many of your true friends may find it too painful to attend.

All the best,

WDL