The Blind Man Society

Today I’m asking the question, what were your favorite pickup lines when you were starting out on the bar scene.  I personally, have never been asked if it hurt when I fell from heaven.  I have never been asked if I’m tired from running through the opposite sex’s mind all day long.  And when its a choice between getting picked up or quarter tap night, there’s really no contest – I ignore all this because I came to play.

And, this train of thought leads me to the question of being a player.  I think we’ve all been there at some point in our lives.  And, there are several signs of one.  My favorite is the following:

A friend from back in the day was going through his player phase and just manhandled and mistreated his cigarettes at the bar.  I informed him politely, that I could instantly tell that he was – only a player would treat his cigarettes that way.  It was just flagrant. And if he treated his cigarettes that way and the little things, he must really have been something with the opposite sex.

I had coffee with someone on their birthday today, and we were talking about the bar scene being the best social training there is. It is an educational course unto itself. A man named Al Maguire in Milwaukee used to say that if you wanted your Bachelor’s Degree in people, you should be a bartender. If you wanted your Master’s Degree, you should then drive a cab. With these two jobs, you would know the public very well and have very sharp vision.

Which ties it all back to the idea of the Blind Man Society. If you want to know the human condition outright, there are 500 books out there…500 of the right books. I personally, have only read around 200 and I’m glad I went no further. I wanted the ability to turn the radar off with people and situations and just be blind to it. I can size things up with the best of them, but when the reading glasses come off and the vision goes fuzzy on many levels, I breathe a sigh of relief. Because I’m still able to turn it off.

These days, I am also working on self-improvement.

I think I’m going back to my old system of giving up typing and instead, handwriting again. Except for this page of course – and a few other areas. I try to do this every couple months because I don’t want to lose my ability to say things correctly the first time, and since a friend was a handwriting analyst, I’ve come to understand (for me, personally) that you can conceivably change yourself more than a little by improving your handwriting and the way you write. Wagging the dog – free and improve your handwriting, and your rear will follow.

I remember hearing about Oxford University which made its students handwrite everything out after everyone else was typing all of their papers. I thought that was the best thing I’d ever heard of. Because, when I was a kid, we didn’t word process. And it was pretty easy to get it right the first time without scribbling everything out because it’s all we knew how to do!

The end of this stream of consciousness entry is the idea of defining moments. My favorite interview that I ever had was with National Geographic in Washington, DC. I arrived late for the meeting and upon introductions said that I would be happy to buy the individual his lunch – it was the least I could do to thank him for taking the time to meet with an unknown. He agreed. We entered the Nat Geo food cafeteria – which, is nicer that most restaurants I have been in and stacked our plates and got in line. Two people from checkout, I reached into my pocket and realized that my wallet was gone. I freaked out. I then immediately turned around and asked this Director if he was familiar with the idea of defining moments between people. Moments that fixed it so that they could part after meeting, and years could go by, but they would always remember who each other was because of that defining moment. He said yes, he understood what I was saying, and I said that’s great because we’re about to have mine right now.

I broke down and told him that I didn’t have any money for his lunch or mine, and he laughed and bought both our meals. I was so scared after, that food was falling off my trembling fork at the table and thankfully he was very amused. We had a great talk about coming into things at a mid-level because a person had enough experience to push back and not get ridden like a mule in the workplace. I thought things went well, all things considered, but it was not to be. I never did get a job after that day, and I found out later it had nothing to do with my showing up penniless for lunch. I also heard that I was indeed correct. For YEARS after that, he remembered who I was.

End of thoughts for this Wednesday night, have a great evening everyone!