Mabel O’Brien was the best schoolteacher I ever had, and I had made her angry. This being back when teachers could discipline pupils, I knew there was punishment in the offing, but she just stood there with her hands on her hips and stared at me. I finally mustered enough nerve to ask, “Well, what’s going to happen to me?” She replied, “I can’t decide right now; I’ll have to wait until I get over being mad at you.” She wisely knew not to make a decision based on anger.
***
“Do What You Do Do Well” is the title of a country song. For decades, two of my friends and I have argued about what it means. One of us says it means that whatever you do you should do it well. Another insists it means do only what you do well. The third says that if you follow either of the foregoing suggestions you will achieve both, so therefore, it means both. Most prolonged arguments are just as futile as this one.
***
I once asked my always-cheerful colleague, Dick Cappon, what the secret of his cheerfulness was. He replied, “Every morning when I get up, I pretend there’s a clothes rack of characteristics at the side of my bed, any one of which I can choose to wear for that day. I always pick a positive attitude.”
***
Anne and I were going to a cocktail party that I didn’t particularly want to attend. As I reached to ring the doorbell she put her hand on my arm and said, “Lyman, if it’s dull – just leave it that way.”
***
When I was about eighteen I was working with a chap named Brian Williams, a young man with a common name but whose character was anything but common. Brian, from Liverpool, England, was a relatively new driver with a relatively old car. One winter day he was inching down a slippery hill in an isolated area just east of Toronto when he lost control and skidded into a car parked on the shoulder of the road. There was no damage to Brian’s car, but the door on the driver’s side of the other car was badly dented. The car he hit was the only one within sight, and there wasn’t a person to be seen anywhere. No house was close enough for anyone to be able to read a license number. Even so, Brian left a note with his name, address and telephone number on it. That was an example of character that I’ve obviously never forgotten.
***
I was playing goal in a charity hockey game, the proceeds of which were going to help a young man who had sustained a brain injury such that he would never play organized hockey again. But on this special night he was dressed in his hockey gear and it was arranged that he take a penalty shot on me. The referee told me that the player had been instructed to “go left.” Of course, I was to let him score, so when he skated in on my goal, I “went right.” Only when we heard the booing after my great stop on the “penalty shot,” did both the referee and I realize that the player’s “left” was my “right.” As Dale Carnegie liked to say when it comes to communication: “Don’t assume; assure.”
***
My cousin Patricia was born with spina bifida at a time when the prognosis was that she would be so severely handicapped that a normal life would be out of the question. Well, she leads a normal life. Yes, medical advances and a seemingly endless series of operations contributed. Yes, the tremendous support and encouragement of a loving family contributed. But the most important contributing factor of all, was, and is, Patricia’s courage. It may have faltered at times, but it has never failed; not even when she was seriously injured when a car veered over the center line and crashed head on with the one in which she was a passenger. Patricia’s courage continues to be an inspiration to all of us who are lucky enough to know her.
***
I had never done a radio commercial, and yet here I was in a studio about to record five of them. I did the first one, and the producer told me to keep going. I did the second one and the producer told me it was fine; and so on until all five were recorded. Then he said to me, “Let’s do the first one over again.” When he played it back for me it was obvious that my performance was terrible. When I asked him why he didn’t have me re-do it right away, he replied, “Had I criticized you right after doing the first one, we’d be re-doing all five of them now, not just one.”
***
Slim was the crankiest, most ill-tempered, fault-finding person I’ve ever encountered. Yet every morning when we arrived at work, Frank always went over to him and chatted for a few moments. When I asked Frank if he was trying to change him, Frank replied, “Hell, no. No one will ever change Slim. I just want to start my day listening to him complain for a while because from then on it will only get better.”
***
The young man from the country had gotten a job at a large potato warehouse in Charlottetown. When he showed up for work at eight o’clock on his first morning, the foreman took him to a remote corner of the massive building where a pile of thousands of potatoes stood beside a large vacant area. The foreman told him, “All you have to do is sort that big pile into three piles: small, medium and large,” and walked away. At mid-morning, when the foreman came to tell the young man he could take a break, he was surprised to see that the big pile was undisturbed and the empty area was still empty. There sat the young man, still holding in his hand the first potato he had picked up. He looked at the foreman and mournfully said, “I can’t make up my mind which size it is.” In most endeavours success depends entirely on the first decision we have to make.