With friends like these

Say what you will about advertising…no, really, say what you will. I’ll wait here. Okay, now that you’ve got it out of your system we’ll begin.

Advertising has lots of currencies depending on what time of day it is. Sometimes the currency is liquor. Occasionally it’s pizza. Once in awhile it’s the camaraderie that can only come from sitting in a dark, cold edit bay for 57 hours straight.

But the most valuable, most consistent currency in the biz is, always has been and always will be relationships.

There’s an old idiom (Who’re you calling an idiom? – BAM!) that tells you to be nice to people on the way up cause you’ll see the same ones on the way down.

Funny story. The other day I ran into someone where I’m working who I worked with at another agency. I haven’t seen this person in about three years, but he recognized me and greeted me like we were long lost war buddies, shaking my hand like it was an Arkansas water pump and asking how I was. He could not have been happier to see me.

I actually felt sorry for him, because - even though I'm not a doctor - I could tell immediately he was suffering from an serious case of amnesia. At that other agency, he was a creative director and I was a freelance copywriter. Many times I had occasion to present work to him, only to have it shot down in what I would consider an unnecessarily arrogant and rude manner.

Clearly, his amnesia has made him forget that when we worked together, he treated me like, oh, what’s the word…oh yes. Shit.

My guess, and I'm going out on a limb here, is that his newfound fondness for me is because he was unceremoniously fired from that other agency, and has been forced to take a sudden deep dive into the freelance pool. Waters which I've been swimming in for a long time.

But, and here's an example of how much I've grown and how mature I can be if I really try, I want to give him the same benefit of the doubt I hope anyone would give me. He may be a different person now than when we worked together. Perhaps he's grown as an individual and creative person. He might be more confident in his talents, and therefore has no reason to treat people the way he treated me in the past.

So I'm going to step up, put my big boy pants on, be the bigger man and let bygones be bygones.

I know you're waiting for the zinger put down at the end here. But not today. Today I'm about forgiveness and generosity to someone who treated me badly in the past.

Which is why I'm not telling him my day rate. It would only upset him.

Cirque Du Coronavirus

Pandemic shmandemic. I roam through life unfrightened and undeterred.

Case in point: I took my first post-coronavirus panic outing yesterday. The family and I decided to spend the afternoon in a closed tent with about 2,000 of our closest, hopefully uninfected friends. We saw VOLTA, the current Cirque Du Soleil production in their big top, which is set up at Dodger Stadium.

It had everything to make the CDC and World Health Organization shake their hazmat-covered heads.

Crowds of people. Closed space. Different nationalities. Surfaces like chairs and armrests that've been touched by thousands of people before us. Port-a-potties that, shall we say were less than spotless.

It was a recipe for disaster. And yet, we all seemed to have gotten out just fine. There was a vague awareness of everyone being a little more cautious not to be in each other's faces, and no matter when you looked it was always rush hour at the hand washing stations outside the restrooms.

I fully expected lots of empty seats from people who'd decided not to venture out in public. I was also sure I'd see surgical masks everywhere I looked. I only saw one, and there wasn't an empty seat in the house.

Only two things reminded everyone of the current cautions. First was before the show when a young child sneezed, and every head within earshot snapped around to look at him waiting to see what was going to happen next. The other was the clown who came down the aisle before the show, and interacted with me by running his gloved hand up and down my sleeve. It made me a little nervous, although the coronavirus was probably the least of the reasons why.

The show was great, and I couldn't help but be amazed by how similarly built the performers and I were. It was like looking in a mirror.

I definitely don't want to minimize the virus and the cautions to be taken, but life just can't stop because of it. And besides, the precautions aren't that hard to abide by.

For starters I've been washing my hands like Howard Hughes since I can remember. And because I've never been a fan of knuckle crushers or sweaty palmed frat boys who shake my hand like it's a dry water pump in rural Alabama, I'm just swell with handshaking going the way of the Zune. Bottles of Purell? Check the center console of my car - I've pretty much cornered the market.

So here's my take on it all: with or without the virus, life is a high-wire act. Let's not go out of our way to turn it into a real circus.