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Making
things happen - with integrity. A weekly CyberMemo designed to keep you on task. Monday June 10, 2002 Volume IV Number 23 |
FOCUS - Crossings
At this stage, my peers tell me I’m not alone. Short term memory seems to be more and more a problem. Maybe it’s information overload – how much data can one human brain store, organize, and then retrieve? Maybe given enough time the wires fray, lose their capacity for conductivity, or maybe the connections just loosen up. Maybe it’s weariness; or brittleness; or lack of oxygen. Whatever the cause, sometimes I simply can’t remember what I did just a little while back.
I’m a professional. I shouldn’t admit this to those who rely on my ability to perform a service, and stay on top of the detail. It seems, I do better remembering when I’m at work (how’s that for an out?). But even so, sometimes I have to stop and ask myself why I just walked into such and such a room. There had to be a reason.
I also talk to myself more these days. While I’m rummaging around in the garage working on a project, I’ve got to coach myself through the maze. I’m ordering my sequence of tasks, trying to get some efficiencies out of good planning, making a list, trying not to double up my efforts. It’s harder to go on autopilot than it was in days gone by. I need to be deliberate about each step, consider my options. And often, this conversation between me and myself is audible.
Otherwise, I forget.
So after a terrific weekend in the Pacific Northwest, wandering around some of our favorite haunts, and getting our first look at the charming city of Vancouver, BC, it came time to pack our things, prepare to say farewell to some of our favorite life long friends jump into the rental car and head south for the Canadian/U.S. border and drive on to Seattle to catch a plane home. We buttoned up our bags, tossed back a couple cups of coffee, and realized one thing. There were no car keys. Anywhere.
This is a problem.
We unpacked everything, again. Searching every pocket. Opening every zipper. Up down. In out. Over under. Nothing. We quizzed each other on everything we could recall for the past twenty four hours. Every step. Every transition. We dumped out the contents of the back-pack. Ransacked the bathrooms, the kitchen, the hide-a-bed, the sofas. Then we went to the rental car in the parking garage below, and realized it was locked up… “Aha!” I said as though a lightening bolt hit… “the keys must be in the trunk!”
I looked across the parking structure, and to my relief and surprise, four uniformed firemen stood chatting with a neighbor about a mysterious odor emanating from the drainage system. It appeared as though they were winding up their investigation, so I interrupted.
“Excuse me, gentlemen, madam,” I smiled, knowing I was imposing. “When you might have a moment… do you know how to break into a car?”
The fireman’s eyes lit up. If he could have, it seemed like he would have answered, “As a matter of fact, that’s my specialty.” But that would have been inappropriate, he wouldn’t want to appear eager, so he said, “What kind of car is it… and why do you need to break in?”
“This is rather embarrassing,” I began. And I told him the whole thing. Well, an abbreviated version. “It’s a Daewoo Laganza.”
He said, “Huh?”
“Yeah, I rented the Daewoo in Seattle.”
“Oh.”
Then he disappeared, going after his tool bag on the fire truck parked outside.
It took about twenty minutes for four on duty firemen to conclude that the Korean manufacturers who designed the Daewoo Leganza had secured the new car so well, that not even these veterans with their special equipment (they explained that they are trained to break into cars to rescue abandoned children, and people stuck in wrecked cars sometimes on fire) could locate the lock inside the door with their slim jims and the only alternative they had was to default to the sledge hammer. We decided against that.
I said, “Hey guys, thanks. I appreciate your taking the time. We’ll have to find an alternative. I’m grateful for the attempt.”
“We could do more, but we’d damage the car,” the head man explained.
And I turned to Carolyn. One more time, I could see it in her eyes, she was filled with pride in her forgetful husband.
Triple A works in Canada, I learned. Dial the toll free number on your card, and the Canadian version of AAA answers the call. It’s the CAA. Earlier, I called my rental car company and gave up after twenty minutes on hold waiting for “the next available agent” who was tending to the needs of some other customer, hanging up the phone in frustration. So imagine my surprise when CAA not only answered after the first ring, but had a man at the curb within a half hour.
“If we get into the trunk, and find no key, can you folks make a key to get me on the road?” I asked the friendly CAA man?
“Nope. No way. We only get you in. If there is no key, you’ve got to talk to your rental agent or a locksmith,” he said as he pulled a tool out of his bag, walked over to the Daewoo door on the passenger side, slipped the metal bar down the window, gave it a yank, and voilá, the door opened. No problem. He smiled, nodded, taking a bow as we all stood in amazement, put the tool back in his pack, jumped in his truck, pulled shut the door and was gone before we could tell him straight out he was a miracle worker.
I looked at Carolyn once again. “We’re in!” I said.
“Well… are you going to open the trunk?” she asked.
“Oh, yeah…” I said, as I turned to the now open door on the driver’s side and pulled the trunk latch. It popped up, and we looked inside.
No key.
We pulled up the mat covering the spare… nothing.
Then, a collective sigh.
Canada has Yellow Pages. Under “Locksmith” I had several options. I dialed one of them. A nice guy answered the phone. I told him my story, sparing the detail. He asked, “Do you have the key code?”
“The key code?”
“Yes. The key code. With that, I can make you a key. Without it, on these new cars, if we are locked out, we’re stuck. Might as well use that sledge hammer. But even if we bust a window and get in, then we’ve got to figure out how to break through the security system on the steering column.”
“Well, the good news is that we are in the car… thanks to CAA. But what you are saying is I’ve got to talk to my rental car company…” I said, remembering that recording I’d already listened to for nearly a half hour - Your call is very important to us. All of our agents are assisting other customers. Your call will be answered in the order in which it was received. Please stay on the line for the next available agent. Cut to canned music.
“WE FOUND IT!”
The voice came from the back of the house. The locksmith heard it, too, through the telephone.
“What?!”
“We found it,” Carolyn said, running into the room.
“Where?”
In the secret pouch in the back-pack, and as she said it, the memory came back through the mist in my mind, the fog cleared and I remembered distinctly putting it there the day before so it wouldn’t get lost.
“I’m relieved, too,” the Canadian locksmith said.
* * * * * * *
Today I’ve been asked to address a luncheon assembly of high school graduates and their parents. It’s an honor really. I’m not sure how the assignment came to me. Maybe it’s because we have been there for three high school graduations of our own children already. The last one was three years ago. Maybe it’s because we simply love these kids. We believe in them. And we are proud of their accomplishments, and the achievement of their parents, which as anyone with experience knows, getting these kids through age eighteen is no small feat.
I was hardly the Valedictorian at my own high school graduation. Today, I’ll be telling them about the day my mother brought a shopping bag full of memorabilia to church one Sunday, and placed them in the back seat of the family car to be sure I got them. Our kids jumped in the car like always, eager for Sunday lunch, waiting for mom and dad to finish up their usual post-worship service conversation with friends, and found the bag. Our two oldest were in high school at the time. To their giggly delight, they found photographs and memories of their father in the brown paper sack, and one by one they picked through and laughed until next they found a treasure among treasures. My high school report cards. They held them up, and looked at each other, as though they were in possession of rare historic documents, which, I suppose, they were. My dear mother had not only preserved those old reports, but now they were in the eager hands of our own children.
When I climbed into the car, unaware of their discovery, they asked, “Dad… was there another Kenneth Kemp who attended La Habra High School?”
“Huh?” Where did that come from? “Why do you ask?”
“Well, we’ve been looking at the grades of a Kenneth Kemp and it couldn’t be you, Dad.”
That’s when I turned around and looked at our children smiling like Cheshire cats holding my grades in their hands like rare and valuable baseball cards with all the stats clear as could be and them wondering how in the world I could have been so demanding about their grades when mine fell so far short of the mark.
“Where did you get those?” I asked, as though finding them was the problem. Of course, I knew right away when I noticed the grocery bag.
“Oh… Thanks a lot, Mom,” was all I could say, rolling my eyes back. She wasn’t there to hear.
* * * * * *
It was our first post-9/11 border crossing. After an hour and a half in a slow moving line with two agents handling the entire Tuesday afternoon crowd, we finally made our way to the crossing with our driver’s licenses at the ready as photo identification.
“Please present your passports and birth certificates,” the agent barked.
“I’m sorry, we don’t have them,” I said.
“Well, where are they?” he demanded.
“I didn’t know we needed them,” I answered lamely.
He took the licenses, and then asked a couple of identifying questions like birthplace, and mother’s maiden name. We answered correctly I guess, because he let us through. But he let us know in no uncertain terms that had we failed the pop quiz we’d a’ been sent directly back to Canada, do not pass go, do not collect $200, no exceptions. I suppose I should have felt badly about our failure to be prepared for full compliance, and maybe if guys are a little nastier at the border, terrorists will think twice about coming across.
But next time, we’ll have better documentation.
* * * * * * *
It’s Monday morning. You are a leader.
How easily we forget. We forget out roots. We forget our documents. We forget where we put the key.
It’s not hard to understand. It’s not just age. It’s not simply the proverbial “senior moment.” We are informed to distraction. But we lose sight of the big picture.
This morning you are crossing over from the weekend to the world of work. You’ve got demands. Your world is full of conflict. Sometimes, you feel stuck. Unable to move on to the next project. You are searching the files for the proper documents. The keys are missing.
Stop for a minute. Make sure those keys are handy. They open the door. They start the car.
Those high school graduates sat there this afternoon, fresh, eager, excited about a new chapter opening up, and I told them about the key. The focal point. The point of reference.
“Keep your eyes fixed on Jesus, the author and perfecter of your faith…”
It came from the Epistle to the Hebrews.
You’ve got the key.
Use it.
Posted in Valley Center, Calfornia
© Copyright Kenneth E. Kemp 2002
Special Thanks to my good friend David Belcher, owner of Rhino Media Group and creator of WisdomGram
LeaderFOCUS is a service of Good Stewardship Associates
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