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We All Do Goofy Things Sometimes ... Another Stellar Sam Moment
December 6, 2016
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Holidays bring about phone calls from old friends armed with memories and laughs. Many of those laughs have come from something we did unknowingly. One of my colleagues from my WYLD/New Orleans programming days reminded me of the "lost weekend." The only reason he knew the story was because I told the facts of my "duh" moment in a meeting at the time.
Getting Accustomed To A New Town...
I had been in the New Orleans for a short time and was having a lot of fun getting used to the food, people, lifestyle, and nuisances of nature; Lovebug season in south Louisiana. These winged insects fly around in pairs in the summer mating in mid-air. For those curious, the process takes hours, thus you see most of them stuck together while flying. Lovebugs are commonly found in Central America and the southeastern United States, especially along the Gulf Coast. All new to me and probably to many of you reading this and not from those parts of the world.
When I first saw two Lovebugs doing the wild thing in mid-air; it looked like a fly with two heads, one each at opposite ends. I was thinking of Jeff Goldblum and the movie "The Fly." But I am just setting the stage for my story, there are a lot of unusual things in New Orleans. But my story is not about Lovebugs, I will get back on topic.
I'm Building Towards My Story
I had just headed home on a Friday night from the grocery store where a local scam artist tried to get me to write him a check because he told me I scraped paint off his car door when I got out of my car. He was sitting in his car when I had returned with my groceries to head home. If I had touched his car with my door, I have no idea how he could tell his rusty multi-colored street beater had been scratched at all. It was a short non-abusive exchange and I felt sorry for the guy and gave him $20 dollars; he was just hustling.
What The Hell Is That Noise?
I pulled out of the store parking lot and headed to my apartment. When I got home I noticed the hole in the screen I asked management to fix was not fixed and worse, the widow was up and the screen was gone. I was not happy and would have called management's emergency number, but it was 7:30p and not really the end of the world; I closed the window and turned on the air conditioning. Too tired to eat, I fell asleep on the couch and woke up to an intermittent buzzing noise. It sounded as if was coming from my bedroom, it kind of sounded like a wasp. I armed myself with a wadded-up newspaper and headed in and looked everywhere. I closed the door and slept on couch because I could not find anything and did not want to wake up to a wasp sting.
The Noise Continued...
I woke up Saturday morning with a stiff neck and was determined to find the wasp and get maintenance to bring back the screen for the window. It was one of those weekends that I decided to only listen and not drop by the station. I stayed in most of the time and my phone never rang once; there were no messages on my machine either. Meanwhile, I kept hearing the buzzing and I went out and bought a can of wasp spray; maintenance had sprayed and I figured these were super wasps. Instead of going to a motel for the rest of the weekend, I was determined to find the wasps.
Monday Morning
It is hard to get much rest on a couch unless it's a pullout and mine wasn't. I got to work and found some notes under my door telling me about problems with our remote equipment causing issues with our paid remotes over the weekend; apparently, engineering had not responded to calls. I had a standard rule, call anytime day or night if anything goes wrong. I called an emergency jock meeting. All morning I had to deal with the sales manager, salesmen, the GM, and traffic. The remotes did not go well and heading into the jock meeting, the sales manager said he had tried to contact me over the weekend.
The Wasp ... Or So I Thought
The first thing I said in the meeting, "Why didn't anyone call me about these problems?" The sales manager, promotions and the jocks said they had tried to contact me. Now I was thinking there was a problem with my phone or my answering machine. I asked, "How many times did some of you call me?" And that's when it came out, "We paged you." I had reluctantly accepted a pager from the company, I said, "You did?" So, to prove it, one of the air personalities paged me and I heard the wasp again, coming from my office and my briefcase; the wasp was my pager on vibrate. Once I told everyone what I had gone through over the weekend, the room was in tears laughing and so was I.
A Learning Moment
I learned to be more accepting of new communications technology, not to list multiple ways in a company directory to contact me, and that pagers can be tricky. I bet right now some of you are thinking about your own funnier moments. Hey, it's the holidays ... share!
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