Tell me a story

Today, and for the next couple of days, I am interviewing candidates to serve as Student Ambassadors for the university.  Ambassadors give 99% of our campus tours to prospective students, and often are the only students these campus visitors will genuinely interact with.  It's an incredibly important job, and a prospect's ambassador experience can sometimes even determine whether they will apply, or ultimately attend, the university.  

I read somewhere that one hiring manager's favorite interview question wasn't even a question, but a command of four little words : "Tell me a story."  It's an intriguing concept, requiring something completely unplanned and unstructured, something "real," and it's exactly the type of thing I would do.  So today, before any and all other questions, I looked at each candidate and asked them to tell us a story.  

At first they would look at me with that unique combination of "terror," and "he has to be joking." They'd usually ask "What kind of story?" or "Can it be about me?"  And then, as the panic subsided, they thought about it for a second, and .... something wonderful happened: they opened up, like a freshly cracked walnut.  We learned how one candidate bonded with a ten year old at a camp this past summer.   Another told us about how they came to have a crippling phobia of bodies of water - and fish, in particular.  A third recounted how she had come to fall in love with music after teaching herself to play the piano, and my favorite told the story of how she adopted a stray cat that behaved like an angel during the day and turned into a hellion at night, climbing her walls (yes, with it's claws) and destroying everything in sight.  So she did what any dutiful child would do ... she gave the cat to her parents. 

And then I found five dollars.

About a boy

Perhaps you remember the 2002 Hugh Grant film in which the life of a layabout playboy happens to intersect with that of a good-hearted, but bullied and clueless, twelve-year old boy.  Heartwarming comic hijinx ensue.   It's an odd couple that only a Nick Hornby novel could provide... until now.

Enter Lunchbox*.  Lunchbox is my first cousin once removed (my cousin's son) and he's 11 years old.**  In the coming weeks, months, and perhaps years, I will be his mentor.  One of the crippling realities of life is that it's very hard to say no to your mother.  Truthfully, I had a lot in common with him at that age - I too loved video games, food, and saying inappropriate things at inappropriate times.  However, our home lives could not have been more different, thus the need for a steadying male influence in his life.

What are we going to do you ask?  Great question; you always were a sharp one.  Thus far we've gone out for Mexican food, went to Wal-Mart (I now know more about Skylanders than you do), and taken in The Lego Movie (most excellent).  There will be some homework and tutoring.  We'll cook, starting with things that use ground beef and a box, eventually graduating to things that involve ground beef without a box (my specialty)  When the winter ends I'll no doubt force him to go on walks around the neighborhood, hopefully without having to use a rope to pull him around.  Perhaps we'll go to bars and pick up chicks.  The world is our oyster!

*Note: Lunchbox is not his real name.  

** His mother is 9 months younger than me.  Imagine if I had an 11 year old son (shudders involuntarily).

Absence etc. etc.

It has been two months and five days since I last posted to this corner of the information super highway - please forgive me.  I don't have a good reason to explain my absence other than that I have been figuratively "down" since this past October, and gradually my motivation withered and fell from the vine.   Winter, with its cold, snow, and incessant darkness has a way of magnifying life's perceived troubles and I just happened to find myself in the mood to wallow in them and play video games.  Lots of video games.

Now March approaches and with it spring in name if not in deed, so here's to flowers, chocolate bunnies, and a brighter blogging tomorrow.

No Rain, No Change

A quick commentary on the California mentality.  As many of you may know, the entire state of California is on the edge of a potentially catastrophic drought.  If no additional rain falls in the next three to four weeks (a likely scenario) then we will receive no statistically significant rainfall until next year.  So, what do I observe every morning on my way to work?  Folks watering their deep green lawns so excessively that water runs down the gutters for hours.

Stupid People.