in this case, the saddle would be my comfy leather desk chair. the horse under this saddle, i suppose, would be my desk paired with laptop setup. whew. i'm off the road. back in nc. back in my bed, with my fridge, my clean underwear drawer, my gym, and my toilet(s).
i spent the whole of last week driving through south carolina (honestly, a beautiful state). hours on the road, sleeping in one hotel after another, braving public restrooms like a champion. don't get me started on the gas station toilets...
(well, i'll give you a snippet - imagine a cash-only station with a bathroom bearing a broken toilet seat, no mirror, gritty bar of dial soap and a dish towel on which to dry your hands. did i take a scalding shower as soon as i reached my hotel? you better believe it.)
i'm home now, and thinking back over the life-changing moments that have occurred since my last post. which leads me to the next phrase which has been running through my mind..."i have a dream..." it's black history month, after all. but really, in my case, it ought to be something more like, "i had a dream." two weekends ago (sorry for the lapse). it left a mark, and hasn't left my thoughts as time has passed. which means, clearly, that it was significant and ought to be shared. opened to you folks for analysis as to its true, deeper meaning.
here we go. imagine this. you're in my amy dreamy-mind, and this is what you see...
you're on a beach. somewhere remote. past the water and the sand is a green forest of pine trees. at the very end are two guerilla soldiers (not the animals, but actual humans with guns) dancing a bit and then falling down into convulsions. you are puzzled, but unphased. you walk along the water, admiring the view, relaxed and just meandering...that is, until the unimaginable happens (of course, it seems somewhat expected in your head while dreaming):
a giant, burning (literally, surrounded by fire) oprah winfrey comes charging through the forest, toppling trees and blazing a trail straight toward you, toward the beach. BAM! BURN! AAAH! and you're frightened. oprah is on a rampage, and she's comin' for you.
as you wonder what to do, where to go to avoid this terrifying fiery oprah, the skies part and you hear a low, soothing voice: "oprah, oprah, calm down. this is god. relax."
you look up to the rosy semi-cloudy sky and see a face up there, and you recognize that face. her face. the face of none other than rosie o'donnell.
in my dream, rosie o'donnell was god. at this point, nothing can surprise us.
it all looked something like this:
and then i woke up. relieved to have escaped the fire-blazing oprah, and calmed by the sense that rosie had things under control.
the question i pose for you: what does it mean?
is rosie some how tuned into the heavens? is oprah a fiery monster in network personality form? i am going nuts?
i swear to you. this was my dream. i cannot get it out of my head, and find myself now slightly more drawn to the rosie show on the OWN network. blast...
but that was a week or so ago. to give you a taste of my trip finale from last week, here's an interesting true story that caused my heart to fall into my butt, shivers to run down my spine and an emergency call to a girlfriend...
i'm driving to my final visit in south carolina to meet with someone whom i hope will become a future client of my firm. after a week of successful visits with warm (almost fatherly) receptions, i was at ease and looking forward to yet another positive experience. and that's how it began.
settling into the worn office chair in the office of my target - a 40-something, slightly overweight county dude...we'll call him billy blue - i asked him about his workplace. we discussed issues he encounters, and ways in which my firm can help. it was strictly business, he accepted my marketing materials without hesitation, and we exchanged business cards.
so that you can picture it, he looked a little like larry the cable guy.
toward the end of our meeting, when i sensed he needed time to let all he had heard sink in (he wasn't asking any questions and i'd asked all of mine), i said:
"well, thank you for your time! if you have any questions, of course you can ask me now, but if some pop up later on please feel free to give me a call or shoot me an email."
he smiled, and responded:
"well, in that case, i guess i'll be asking you out."
...i paused...wwwhhhhhatttt?
how, in what i said, did he feel it appropriate to respond by suggesting he'd ask me out?
in the uncomfortable silence, i played through what i had just said. and then i figured it out. somehow, some way, he must have mistaken, "ask me now" for "ask me out". certainly not what i had, in fact, said, but apparently what the man heard.
fuck!
a potential client, i didn't want to make him uncomfortable. add to that the fact that i was extremely uncomfortable, and suffice it to say i bumbled through the next minute or two with a red face and lack of eye contact.
he scooted his chair closer, i backed away and stood up to leave. he said, "well, you have my business card, and it has my home number on it. you can call me any time." he walked me out to my car, opened my door for me, and asked what time i'd be getting home. "late" is all i could say, followed by, "we hope to do business with you. thanks again for your time." commence hurried backing away in my car and speeding in any direction possible without yet checking my gps.
a few miles away i determined i was at a safe distance. i parked, programmed my gps for home, and anxiously pulled back onto the road, phoning a friend for support.
i spent the next few hours trying to calm myself down, re-running those moments of calamity through my mind and trying to figure out how to salvage the business potential without putting myself in a tough spot. would i, could i, go "out" with this man? hell no. did i want to make him feel silly and/or "dissed"? no way.
i was in a pickle.
as i was nearing home, i received a text message - something i don't often get on my work cell. checking it, i saw it was from billy blue...it seems he may have noticed my (obvious) carefully hidden discomfort in the last moments of our meeting. he asked if he had heard me right about him asking me out, or if he had misunderstood. after a few quick texts back and forth, we squared away the fact that he had misheard, but that we still very much hope for the opportunity to do business with him.
whew. that was a close one.
a glass (or two) of wine later, i was fine.
so there, friends, is a brief summary of some highlights of the past week or so. take from it what you will, comment at your convenience, and thank goodness for clean toilets, rosie o'donnell, and text messaging.
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