Tales from Happy Hour - Ten Things I Remember People Saying to Me While Growing Up

May 18, 2025

Ten Things I Remember People Saying to Me While Growing Up
(In no particular order)
1. "Do you think it's quicksand?"
- one of my 9 year old childhood friends to me after we left the neighborhood and walked through the "forest" to a nearby creek with sandy banks. We always thought quicksand would be a bigger issue than it turned out to be.
2. "I'm making a wing-wang for the duck's ass"
- my Father and Uncles any time I would ask them what they were doing. What they were doing often involved a pocket knife and a piece of wood.
3. "Dang, did I just spit on you?"
- my high school track coach - Phil Welker - just after he accidentally spit tobacco juice on my hand while I was crouched down on the track while practicing my starts nearby and he didn't see me until it was too late.
4. "What the hell happened to you? You weren't half as big as a pissant when you left here"
- my old high school football coach - Jim Williams - when I returned to my high school after my first year in college where I had been lifting weights.
5. "It's either - 'at some point', or 'at some time'. It's never - at-some-point-in-time. That's redundant and unnecessary!"
- visiting professor from SUNY Oswego who taught one of my finance classes at the Comm. School at the University of Virginia (UVa). It seemed to really annoy him when someone said "at-some-point-in-time" so he stopped class to make the afore mentioned pronouncement.
6. "You know what, you're really not that great at anything. But you are fairly competent at a bunch of things. Ever thought of trying the Decathlon?"
- one of my favorite college coaches at the UVa - Jim Beaver - who suggested I take up the decathlon - which I ended up doing and really enjoying.
7. "I only have three rules in this company: 1) Respect for the Customer, 2) Assumption of Good Will and 3) Don't screw the help"
- the CEO of the first company I worked for when he was interviewing me. He had just had to fire the VP of Marketing for having a relationship with the head of Sales who reported to him.
8. "Want to learn how to catch a Javelin?"
- an assistant coach at UVa who showed me how easy it was to actually catch a javelin that was in flight - as long as you approached it from the side as it was coming down.
9 "Whatever you do, don't tell Dad"
- my older, teenage brother Mike when we decided to hide fireworks in the bottom of our luggage and smuggle them back to the United States from Rio de Janeiro using our Diplomatic Passports.
10. "Joe, is there anything you would like to tell us?"
- my Dad, at the dinner table after I had gotten my nose broken in a fight when I was 10 years old. At the time my nose was swollen and bent to the right and in my 10-year-old pea brain, I was hoping that no one would notice. I eventually confessed and got my nose fixed.