It’s been an adult life of working that I ended up with a questioning phrase that is perhaps becoming time wearied. “It’s Friday, right?” Workers are looking for their last day of the work week because tomorrow means they get to do what they want and not necessarily what they must. Right?
This greeting has served me well. It struck up a conversation with thousands, broke the ice of a quiet elevator, and allowed me to spend the time getting to know someone. Maybe I helped someone past their reticence or shyness. It could be I even made a difference in a life when no one seemed to care.
I’m not a personality that has a “Sign On, Sign Off” quip that we know them by, and this got me thinking about those who are often known by these little one-liners.
When greeting Dave Ramsey in a small conference room, he uttered his phrase when asked how he was doing: “Better than I deserve.“
I listened to Paul Harvey for years as he closed his radio broadcast segment with, “And now you know the rest of the story. This is Paul Harvey. Good Day!” Add with this the 3-minute radio segment with Charles Osgood and his Osgood Files. You enjoyed listening to the radio each morning on the way to work. I always learned something. That’s why I listened.
If you are at least within a decade of my age, you remember Walter Cronkite, “And that’s the way it is.”
And who could forget Carol Burnett? She sang her signoff and tugged her ear for her mom. “I‘m so glad we had this time together. Just to have a laugh or sing a song. It seems we just got started, and before you know it, Comes the time we have to say, So Long!“
All of this set my mind to roaming,
If my time comes before I’m ready,
Will someone have a memory of my words,
Or my style of greeting, perhaps the way I said goodbye.
Being known is not important…
But we will all be remembered for one thing or another.
What we all seem to fear is no memory.
We’ll be gone, and no one will have a thing to say.
When I started blogging, I created what might be called a tagline: “Making sense of life, one blog at a time.” For over fourteen years, that’s what I’ve tried to do. I hope I did it well enough that someone will remember when suddenly, I’m no longer here.
Perhaps someone will remember my initials…I’m trying to note every blog post with them. I’ve been using a form of this since about 1968-69 from a class project in the 8th grade.
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