The Parent Lottery
I WON THE parent lottery.
I was born with the winning ticket, a major reason I was able to live out my childhood dreams.
My mother was a tough, old-school English teacher with nerves of titanium. She worked her students hard, enduring those parents who complained that she expected too much from kids. As her son, I knew a thing or two about her high expectations, and that became my good fortune.
My dad was a World War II medic who served in the Battle of the Bulge. He founded a nonprofit group to help immigrants’ kids learn English. And for his livelihood, he ran a small business which sold auto insurance in inner-city Baltimore. His clients were mostly poor people with bad credit histories or few resources, and he’d find a way to get them insured and on the road. For a million reasons, my dad was my hero.
“If you have a question,” my folks would say, “then find the answer.” The instinct in our house was never to sit around like slobs and wonder. We knew a better way: Open the encyclopedia. Open the dictionary. Open your mind.
23
I’m on My Honeymoon, But If You Need Me…
JAI SENT me out to buy a few groceries the other day. After I found everything on the list, I figured I’d get out of the store faster if I used the self-scan aisle. I slid my credit card into the machine, followed the directions, and scanned my groceries myself. The machine chirped, beeped and said I owed $16.55, but issued no receipt. So I swiped my credit card again and started over.
Soon, two receipts popped out. The machine had charged me twice.
At that point, I had a decision to make. I could have tracked down the manager, who would have listened to my story, filled out some form, and taken my credit card to his register to remove one of the $16.55 charges. The whole tedious ordeal could have stretched to ten or even fifteen minutes. It would have been zero fun for me.
Given my short road ahead, did I want to spend those precious minutes getting that refund? I did not. Could I afford to pay the extra $16.55? I could. So I left the store, happier to have fifteen minutes than sixteen dollars.
All my life, I’ve been very aware that time is finite. I admit I’m overly logical about a lot of things, but I firmly believe that one of my most appropriate fixations has been to manage time well. I’ve railed about time management to my students. I’ve given lectures on it. And because I’ve gotten so good at it, I really do feel I was able to pack a whole lot of life into the shortened lifespan I’ve been handed.
55
All You Have to Do Is Ask
Sometimes, all you have to do is ask.
I’ve always been fairly adept at asking for things. I’m proud of the time I got up my courage and contacted Fred Brooks Jr., one of the most highly regarded computer scientists in the world. After beginning his career at IBM in the Fifties, he went on to found the computer science department at University of North Carolina. He is famous in our industry for saying, among other great things: “Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.” (This is now known as “Brooks Law.”)
I was in my late twenties and still hadn’t met the man, so I emailed him, asking: “If I drive down from Virginia to North Carolina, would it be possible to get thirty minutes of your time to talk?”
He responded: “If you drive all the way down here, I’ll give you more than thirty minutes.”
He gave me ninety minutes and became a lifelong mentor to me. Years later, he invited me to give a lecture at the University of North Carolina. That was the trip that led to the most seminal moment in my life—when I met Jai.
Sometimes, all you have to do is ask, and it can lead to all your dreams coming true.
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