Words and Thoughts: Cheese Shaped Legos, or Lego Shaped Cheeses
Hello again, alleged readers. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking this week, but not about the usual stuff like why some cheese is round and some cheese is square. No, this week I’ve been doing thinking equally as deep as the cheese shape thoughts, but different, because it’s not about cheese shapes. This week I’ve been introspecting. I suppose I’ve thought a bit about the cheese, but not as much, on account of the aforementioned introspecting.
It all started when I was browsing LinkedIn for job listings while I was at work. To be clear, I think LinkedIn is the work of the devil, but it’s one of the few websites that the computer guys at work have seen fit to allow me access to. I used to be able to go to Facebook.com, and actually it was super useful: Instead of using “email” to contact my coworkers, I would just go to my company’s Facebook Page, find random pictures posted on the company profile, and reach out to my coworkers in the comments section on various photos. I think “RE: @Michael, Please Send the Report on How Many Customers Were Injured When Product # CR1085L6729 Started Exploding” is a much more pleasant read when it’s posted under one of the photos from our company picnic four years ago. Alas, no more Facebook for Ol’ Stav at work now, and I have no idea why.
Anyway, in my LinkedIn feed, a childhood friend popped up. He’s apparently now the director of Marketing for all of Southeast Asia at a global chemical company. I haven’t talked to this friend since the fifth grade. I went over to his house one time in the third grade, and I vividly recall him explaining, while we were playing with Hot Wheels, that he couldn’t make a good helicopter sound, so instead he just made motorcycle noises when playing with a helicopter, because it’s as close as he could get. Then we took turns seeing how far we could get a single 12 x 1 Lego piece up our noses. This guy now runs a whole-ass marketing division for an entire global region for a major multinational corporation.
It’s been at least several years since the third grade. And I’d say that we’ve obviously taken very different paths in life. We’ve each made choices that brought us to our respective present realities. I wonder how different things would be if I had done just a couple things differently. I could be the one responsible for a whole-ass Marketing division from a high-rise office building in Singapore right now. Wow. What a horrifying thought. Just a couple of wrong turns may have put me on the very same path as my childhood friend there. I wonder if I should reach out to him and see if he’s doing alright. I could let him know that despite how things are now, it won’t always be like this, and things are bound to get a little better, a little brighter, and for sure a little less hectic, eventually.
I think I will. But boy howdy does this all make me thankful. Suddenly my problems don’t seem so insurmountable when I take a look at my helicopter-noise challenged, yet deep nosed, friend’s lot in life. I know I get stressed about the cheese shapes sometimes, but it’s not so bad, because I know someday, I’ll figure it out. Whereas my friend might never escape. I don’t mean to be morbid, but honestly, he might even get promoted.
