Years went by without pictures. It became too hard to be the family archivist in an age of ever-changing technology, especially for someone like me who fears any gadget more complicated than a cocktail shaker. Every time I tried, a battery died or a memory card went missing or I pushed the wrong button or accidentally taped over someone’s piano recital.

I liked this comment after her oldest daughter complains because there is only one viewable family video left: “She got good at guilt at college,” Slatalla observes. And she demonstrates how technology challenged she is in this exchange:

“Look how young your father looks,” I said. Clementine picked up the Mino, examined it briefly and said, “That’s because you forgot to peel the plastic off the lens.”

It’s a fun article and a quick read.

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My earliest memory of a career ambition was my wish to be a milkman. Yes, we still had milkmen when I was very little, driving around in their trucks before dawn and leaving glass bottles with the foil top in an insulated box outside the door. I wasn’t so fond of school at that age, and I found out that college (more school) was not required for a career as a milkman, so that sounded good to me.

Even when I was in college, I was under the impression that I got to make a choice about my career. I simply had to decide what it was I wanted to do and then go about making it happen. In fact, that is what happened, and I embarked on my first career, as a teacher. And when I wanted to try something else, I went to grad school, thinking I would get to choose once again.

And perhaps I could have chosen, if I had been truly determined to do so. But that’s when things really began to shift. Since that point, what I have done, the jobs that I have held, have been much more determined by circumstances than by my careful planning.

I’ll date myself again: remember the video game, Frogger? A frog attempts to cross a busy highway by jumping from one moving car to another. If you fail to land him on a car he gets flattened, instead. Well, since graduate school my career path feels like a game of Frogger. And I suspect for many other people that is the case, too.

As an adult with a family to support, I did not have the luxury of choosing exactly the job I wanted after graduate school. I leapt on the least worst option and was happy to have a paycheck. In that position, I kept my eye out for other opportunities in the organization, and hopped around a bit to roles that looked interesting or promising, but constrained by the chance of openings and availability.

At one point, my prospects looked bleak due to factors completely beyond my control, so I looked around for a safe place to jump. The call center looked like a possibility, although I didn’t have any experience there and wasn’t sure what I would have to offer in that environment. Certainly not the place I ever planned to land when I was in college or even graduate school, but I hopped in.

Luckily, I landed in an analyst role and fit right in. I ended up with a great boss (Jay Minnucci), who taught me just about everything I know about running call centers. And I had no idea where my career would go after that — I tried to plot it out, but there did not seem to be very many options, so it was looking like I had hit a career dead-end. I liked my role, but I didn’t want to do it forever.

But the Frogger career path came into play, again. My boss left to become a consultant and my career situation deteriorated without his support. When he called to tell me there was an opportunity at ICMI (my current employer), I leapt once again into the unknown. And just in time — within a year my old analyst team was disbanded and half were let go.

I truly enjoy my current role as ICMI’s Membership Director, but just like anyone else, I wonder what the future holds and what I might like to do next, since it’s hard to imagine I’ll have this exact position for the rest of my life. But at this point in my career I’ve realized that I don’t really get to plan everything out. It’s not as simple as deciding to be a milkman and then driving that truck for the rest of my life. For one thing, the job of milkman has long ago disappeared, so all of them had to leap into something else whether they liked it or not.

Wonder where the next car that I land on will be going? Sure hope I don’t miss and get smushed!

William F. Buckley Jr.’s greatest talent was friendship. He showered affection on his friends, and he had an endless stream of them, old and young. His second great talent was leadership.

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When I began as an undergraduate, I was ravenous for learning. I got the course catalogue before my freshman year and devoured it, fascinated by all that I could learn. I couldn’t wait to try all kinds of courses of study. Neuroscience, I still recall, sounded amazing.

And then there was philosophy. I read Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance in high school and found it to be a thought-provoking glimpse into philosophy. I had a small inkling that maybe philosophy was what I was meant for, and I signed up for an introductory-level course. I envisioned spirited and intellectual debates, learning how to make arguments and refute them, becoming a master of logical reasoning, and studying the classic thinkers of all-time. I was prepared to be enthralled.

Instead, I was bored and confused. The texts assigned were dense and seemed to be purposely obtuse. Even if they were not designed to weed out a large number of the excited freshman who had enrolled in the class, they could hardly have done a better job. The class itself was a tedious and rather pompous lecture in which I found my notes more full of questions than insights. I don’t think I lasted more than a week, and I wrote philosophy off as a boring field for intellectuals with little practical connection to reality.

Now it sounds as though I was just ahead of my time. Philosophy courses are frequently inter-disciplinary, combined with other fields such as economics and politic science. Students are engaged in the ways I wanted to be, and they are drawn to philosophy as a major that will give them a solid foundation in thinking and reasoning that can be applied to many careers. So if were beginning college today, I might well end up majoring in philosophy. Too late now, though. I’ll just blog about it.

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So, we have destiny versus grit, dynasty versus underdog, etc. Part of me wants to see someone replace the Miami Dolphins, finally, as the only NFL team to have a perfect season. Part of me thinks the Patriots deserve to be crowned Super Bowl Champions after the incredibly dominating season they have had — it would be hard to deny they have truly been the best team in football, after all.

But part of me loves underdogs and upsets, and this would be an upset all right. It would be right up there with my very first Super Bowl memory, when Joe Namath and the Jets beat the Colts. My dad assured me before the game that the Colts would win, and I was rooting for them (why, I don’t know — maybe I liked the logo on their helmets?).

I was baffled when the Colts lost, not really grasping at that age that those everyone agreed were “the best” could be beaten — that conventional wisdom could be wrong. Maybe I have liked underdogs since then, having seen how much more fun it would have been to have pulled for the Jets when they won. And after all, if they lost, that was what everyone expected, anyway.

But in this game there’s another factor. I just don’t like the Giants. Growing up in South Jersey, 20 minutes from Philadelphia and only receiving Philly television stations, I naturally became a fan of Philadelphia sports teams. Eagle fans don’t like the Giants, as a rule.

Plus, I resent the fact that the Giants play in New Jersey but won’t own up to it in their name. If you’re not proud of New Jersey, go play someplace else! New Jersey has a lot going for it, and I long ago tired of the lack of respect it gets. That the Giants keep “New York” in their name while their stadium is in New Jersey is just another slap in the face for my home state.

So, who do I root for in this game? All I am hoping for, really, is a close, exciting and competitive contest, where the commercials are a pleasant diversion, instead of the best reason to keep watching.

I recently ran across those stories, written when I was about 30, as I was searching through old files for something else. (Yes, I keep *everything* I have written.) The earliest success story was from pre-kindergarten, my first year of fourteen years at Moorestown Friends School (that’s Pre-K + Kindergarten + 12 grades, in case you thought I took too long to graduate).

In pre-kindergarten, I was not big enough or strong enough to get on top of the monkey bars, and I was envious of the kids who could. They got to sit on their perch above the rest of us, on top of what was essentially a horizontal ladder high above the ground (it seemed high at the time, anyway).

No one in my class, however, could hang from the bars and go hand-over-hand across the whole way. For some reason that I can’t recall now, I came up with the goal to be the first in my class to get across the monkey bars.

I worked at it in recess. I would just keep doing it over and over. I do not have any idea how long I had to practice, but I do know I was, indeed, the first to make it across. Maybe no one else really noticed or cared — I can’t be sure now, but I know I was enormously proud of myself because I knew I had made it.

I can see aspects of my adult self in that little boy. The obvious lesson, of course, was that if I set my mind to do something and work hard at it, I can compete and win. (I was fond of reading The Little Engine That Could — “I think I can, I think I can, I think I can!”)

But there was another lesson, too. If I had announced to everybody that I planned to be first to get across the monkey bars, some bigger and stronger kid would likely have done it before me. (After I did it, others soon followed suit, and could do it more quickly and gracefully than me.) But I just went about my business, working toward my goal without drawing attention to what I was doing. I learned more than just to work hard and be determined: one of the keys to success is to take initiative and identify opportunities that others have overlooked.

OK, now I’ll mark this posting in the Nostalgia category and get back to the present before I drive away any of my readers who have no interest in sappy stories that have morals to them. Except I know, of course, that my most loyal reader will like this one! Right, Mom?

In case you don’t know, either, it’s a phrase that originates in the Bible and means to die. In more casual parlance, it means to pack it in or give up. I knew this, of course, as did the other 40+ year-olds he told the story to. But the second young woman he tried the phrase on had the same reaction: “What are you talking about?”

This was one of those rueful moments we all will experience at some point in our lives, and which some of us seem to be experiencing more than before. (Reminds me of the comedian’s line about how he seems to be hanging out with an older crowd than he used to.) Apparently people in their mid-twenties are not familiar with “give up the ghost,” so it must have passed out of frequent usage some time ago, leaving those of us who know what it means feeling like old fogies.

Oh, and the first young woman handled the situation very smoothly, as she reassured Steve that she works with lots of “older people.” Has anyone seen my cane?

One day I found the 43 Places website, and I racked my memory to recall all of the different countries I have been to, entering each of them there. It’s fun to look at the long list (and to note how the map of Europe in particular has changed, with some countries splitting into parts and Germany joining into one — no more Checkpoint Charlie and the Wall).

Bobby Fischer, the most powerful American chess player in history, died on Thursday in a hospital in Iceland. No cause of death was given.

I heard the news before I saw the headline: “Bobby Fischer, Chess Master, Dies at 64.” I admired Bobby Fischer when I was a boy. His accomplishments seemed legendary, and since he was so young when he burst onto the chess world stage, it gave me a feeling that anything was possible. If he could do those things . . . it was not unlike imagining oneself as a pro athlete, except no specific body type was required.

I became aware of Bobby Fischer from reading his step-by-step guide to chess. It must have been a Christmas present, I suppose, but I read that book over and over. It was programmed learning (remember those things?) so you were presented with a situation, asked how to respond to it, and then when you turned the page you saw his answer. I grew quite fond of chess, and played many games, primarily against my father, who would always win. Until one day when I got good enough to win, and then I don’t recall that we played so much after that — I’m not sure exactly why, but for some reason I just didn’t want to play chess that much anymore.

Of course, later in his life, Fischer became quite an oddity. “Eccentric” was probably too mild a word. It was a learning experience for me, as a childhood hero acted increasingly un-heroic. I was torn between admiring his early accomplishments and being disgusted by his behavior later in life. I wanted to still admire him — we don’t want to let go of our heroes — but I finally had to accept that he was one very odd person and no longer worthy of my admiration; rather, perhaps, my sympathy or perhaps pity, to have seen him fall so far from what I perceived as greatness to ranting irrelevance.

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