When I was a young boy, I lived with my parents and older brother in a one-bedroom house at the end of a long dirt road in the middle of the forest. Couple this isolation with the facts that we didn’t own a TV and our car wasn’t roadworthy enough to go very far, and it would be correct to conclude that I lived a rather cloistered childhood. By the time I was six, I doubt that I had ventured more than three miles from our home.
As a boy, I loved to watch Father Knows Best, a TV program showcasing your typical sitcom family of the 50s. One of the more memorable episodes involves a short-wave radio that teenager Bud is refurbishing. When he finally gets the contraption working, he finds himself listening to a conversation between two boats located over a thousand miles away. The signal is bouncing off the ionosphere—making him privy to a conversation between the “Betty Anne,” a 34-foot cabin cruiser and other vessels nearby.
It’s my first day at Fairhaven Junior High School and I learn that every single student in my homeroom (not counting me) had been registered at the elite, private, and very expensive grade school across town when they were still embryos. Then, starting at age five, for the next six years of their lives, they …
During the month of July, we publish “best of” content. The following article was first published on May 21, 2008. When I woke up that bright and sunny morning, I never suspected that I’d burn down my bedroom. But some days just don’t go as planned. It was a Sunday morning and this meant that …
A couple of my employees tend to get all the other staff in an uproar. They constantly turn people against each other and pick on the newbies. How can I address my employees’ tendency to “stir the pot” and help them recognize the harm they’re doing to our work environment?
I have an aging mom who needs to be moved into an assisted living facility, but she just won’t hear of it. How can I have a conversation with her to help her understand that she needs to move so we will know she is safe?
The TV shows I watched as a boy frequently offered up scenes of a father, dressed in suit and tie, coming home from work, carrying an expensive briefcase, and whistling a happy tune. But that would be the end of any work references. Once the briefcase was stowed, no sitcom writer dared bring down the mood with sordid details about the nature of work itself. Consequently, the message of the 50s was as vague as it was odd.
“Captain Newton wants to speak to you,” said the voice on the other end of the phone. “The captain?” I thought to myself. I’d only been out of training for a couple of months and already I’d done something wrong!
Visit the Crucial Skills blog to read Kerry Patterson’s article, Kerrying On: Confessions of a Professional Trick-or-Treater.
Visit the Crucial Skills blog to read Kerry Patterson’s Crucial Skills Newsletter article, Kerrying On: The Merchant of Bellingham.
