Wednesday, November 30, 2011

More Perfect Moments

Actually I'm going to start this entry by removing one perfect moment. Though it was a great afternoon, shooting par was not a perfect moment per se. During the round I had some perfect moments that I remember clearly though, two in fact, the first after hitting a shot onto the green and near the stick which prompted me to think "this is how the pros feel all the time" as I just knew I was going to hit the shot where I hit it and executed the shot as good as possible for me. Then on the last hole I stood over a 8 foot putt that I needed to sink for birdie and a par 72 and I just knew I was going to roll it in and I did.

Alexis asked about perfect business moments and their noticeable absence. After pondering that statement (see, I read the comments!), I drew the conclusion that it's hard for me to have perfect moments in business because of the nature of what I do and did. Almost every decision has had a longer term payoff and the payoffs were almost always from a decision made some time previously. For instance, hiring someone. I made plenty of good hires, but you don't know that at the time and you're not "in the moment" and lucid about the action and outcome. Does that make sense? You don't the hire is a good one until much later. You don't know an investment decision is good until much later. So nothing really stands out from a work perspective.

Here's something that does stand out: getting sick in high school. Time to weave something magical to get this to work right? Actually it's not too difficult. I was a freshman, always a tough time, and it was the Fall semester so it was still very new. After struggling to get to school because I didn't feel well, I really started to feel it as I closed my locker and headed towards my first class. Then it hit me; I was definitely going to throw up. I calmly walked over to a drinking fountain, one of the big old ones that are embedded into the side a wall not the free standing metal boxes, and hurled. It was a nice, controlled, matter of fact hurling with no extra dry heaves or spillage. Hardly anyone even noticed and I felt AWESOME afterwards. After rinsing out my mouth and getting some gum, I headed off to class and didn't even go home.

Finally, for this entry at least, was a perfect moment involving the law. It was a few years ago, maybe 8 or so, and I was headed to a Cubs game. As I was walking down the street which connected to Clark street (which runs to Wrigley Field), I saw a guy running away from the stadium and heading down an alley. It looked really suspicious so I ran after him, just what the police want you to do right? When I got to the alley, he wasn't in sight, so I headed down relatively quietly. As far as he knew, I wasn't there. After a few minutes I saw him behind some garbage cans next to a garage. I ran around the cans, grabbed him and bent his arm behind his back so his hand was moving up towards his head (standard move for disabling people). I said, "I don't know what the hell you did or who you're running from, but we're going to go find out." As we got to the entrance to the alley, a plain clothes cop came running up to us with handcuffs and his badge on display. "I'll take it from here." he said. "Thanks man." Turns out he sold someone fake tickets and took off running. And that was it.

3 comments:

alexis said...

holy crap, citizen arrest Joe, well done! And yeah, thanks for reading the comments :D

terri said...

Yeah - the citizens arrest - that's a little scary. Nice that it worked out in your favor, but I feel the need to admonish you a little bit, so here goes: You didn't know if that guy had a gun! You could have gotten hurt!

That said... Well done!

el supremo de nm said...

Crap Joe if I knew you were that good at disabling people, I'd have been a lot more careful about some of the things I say to and about you when we're in public :(