Liminal
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
On Keepin It Real this week, Cam Marston makes some observations on this odd stretch of the calendar between Christmas and New Years. ----- This is a strange time of year every year. Kinda a liminal space between two big holidays. My instinct says I need to be working but the buzz of my email – a reflection of how busy my work world is – is so quiet. It’s hard to get anyone to make decisions right now. Beginning around December 18th, we enter the “let’s circle back on this next year” stretch of the calendar. We go from opening small talk with “So, are you ready for...
info_outline
Russians
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
On Keepin' it Real this week, Cam takes us back to 1988 when he and his team lined up to upset the world order in an all out international rowing competition. It was one for the record books. ----- It was the spring of 1989 in Augusta, Georgia. I was a member of the Tulane University Rowing team and we were there to train for Spring Break. Crew teams from across the south and many of the elite crew teams from the northeast came to Augusta and this perfect stretch of the Savannah River to train during the week and race at the end of the week. A call went out that the organizers were throwing...
info_outline
Top Hat
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
On this week's Keepin It Real, Cam Marston has just returned from a few days in Fort Lauderdale. It's a different world down there, Cam says. One that he might have envied at one point in his life. ------ My wife and I returned from Ft Lauderdale Saturday. We were there for a corporate event where I was giving a speech. My client generously offered an extra couple of nights in the host hotel and our room was on the 26thfloor overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. I watched the sun rise each morning as I sipped coffee and read. It began as a faint glow on the horizon to a disk coming out of the water....
info_outline
Regrets
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
On this week’s Keepin It Real, Cam hopes you have no regrets from Thanksgiving. And if you do, that you learn from them. ----- Well, how’d it go yesterday? Any family flare ups? Any thoughts you wish you’d kept to yourself? Thanksgiving gatherings are famous for finding people’s boiling points and the election having been just a few weeks ago, some are still gloating and others still licking their wounds. Any regrets from yesterday? I heard Dan Pink speak last week at a conference in San Francisco. He’s a New York Times best-selling author and his most recent book is called The Power...
info_outline
'Tis The Season
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
On this week's Keepin It Real, Cam Marston wants you to know he's NOT A CYNIC. But there are things this time of year that just kinda get to him... ----- ‘Tis the season for pensive and sappy messages. I’m so sorry but it’s true. They’re appearing in TV commercials, in client and vendor emails. Letters received in the mail about the joys of the season and now’s the time to be grateful and all that. I hate being a cynic, but it all appears to be virtue signaling to me. The people I know sending these messages are savage businesspeople and it’s like times running out and they’re...
info_outline
Cats
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
On the way home from Oxford Saturday, Cam and his family stopped at a service station which led to him thinking about what NOT to put on his Christmas list. ----- For years I had my children convinced I was allergic to cats. I told them the reason we couldn’t have a cat as a pet was that my head would explode in a fiery ball. They wanted a cat. They asked regularly and finally accepted that I was allergic. I’m not allergic to cats. I’m not sure how they found out, but the cat-pet requests are back. Frankly, I want nothing more to do with anything that requires fuel or any sort of...
info_outline
Owls
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
On this week's Keepin It Real, Cam tells us about some early morning attacks that are happening in his part of town. You'd be surprised at who is doing the attacking. ----- On the top of the Tangles Hair Salon on Bit and Spur Road in Mobile sits a hat and a headlamp with its light on. The headlamp is the type that an early morning jogger wears before the sun comes up. How it got up there is a heck of a story. Dennison Crocker jogs before daylight nearly every morning. His headlamp lights the way. One dark morning near Bit and Spur Road, a giant thunk, thud, and whoosh caught Dennison off...
info_outline
Can I Transfer?
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
On this week's Keepin' It Real, Cam recalls a time when he was very much out of his element and was slightly afraid for his life. ----- About midway through the fourth quarter of Alabama’s loss to Vanderbilt, my son, who is a student at the University, sent me a text. It read, “Can I transfer?” I laughed. As a Tulane student we were fond of saying that on Saturdays in the fall, the New Orleans Superdome hosted a cocktail party for students to mix and mingle in the stands. Occasionally we would look up and notice that a football game was going on in front of us, but we never let it...
info_outline
FBI
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
On this week's Keepin It Real, Cam Marston tells us about a bomb maker he met who sends the bombs he makes to his friends. Oddly enough, you and I should be happy he's doing it. ----- There’s a man on the outskirts of Mobile who spends a good part of his days making bombs. He uses items he finds around town and buys from retail stores. He then sends his bombs to his buddies to see if they can disarm them. It’s a game and, believe me, it’s a game you and I should be grateful they’re playing. I’m participating in a seven-week course called the FBI Citizens Academy. For two hours each...
info_outline
Infantilized
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
On this week's Keeping It Real, Cam Marston reacts to a book review about society and how we're raising kids. It's not the kids fault, Cam says, it's definitely the parents. ----- The Economist magazine reviewed a book called Infantilised: How Our Culture Killed Adulthood. The author, Keith Hayward, argues that western society is keeping kids less mature than previous generations. He tells of a young lady who insisted on spelling the word hamster with a P. When corrected repeatedly, she called her mom and put her on speakerphone to tell her boss not to be so mean. That’s laughable, but...
info_outlineOn this week's Keepin It Real, Cam's family dog heard what he said to the vet. And she has something to say about it.
-----
When I walked through the back door our dog, Lucy, looked at me as if to say “you and I have some unfinished business.”
Lucy had been feeling bad. She was lethargic and had thrown up in four or five places in the house. On the rugs, of course. I got to my hands and knees to try to clean them up. It was nasty. She definitely wasn’t herself and my wife, who Lucy seems to regard as The Kind One, took her to the vet. My wife texted that afternoon saying, “Please go pick up Lucy before the vet closes today.” Nothing more.
At the vet I told the lady that I’m here to pick up Lucy and I’m in a hurry to get downtown for a meeting tonight. In my experience veterinarians, as a rule, seldom operate with any sense of urgency. They’re in the warm, fluffy, cuddly business which does not lend itself to hurrying. To her credit she jumped into action and said, “that will be $800.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Say that again.”
“Eight-hundred dollars.” My expression must have concerned her.
“I’ll print the receipt,” she said, “so you can see what was done.”
The receipt was written in medical code. None of it made any sense to me. As if these Latin looking medical terms and abbreviations explained anything. What I did comprehend, though, was the long column of dollar figures running down the right side of the page.
Then I said what makes vet offices hate people like me. “You know I can get a new dog that’s not broken for this amount.” A moment of silence then, “Yes. I know.” She didn’t roll her eyes but she may as well have.
“For this amount I need to speak to my wife to make sure she’s aware of this and then speak to the vet to get an explanation of what was wrong and what we need to do. My wife is busy now and I don’t have time for the explanation today, I need to get downtown. Can you keep Lucy for the night and let my wife come get her and talk to the vet tomorrow.”
“Yes,” she said, dropping her eyes. She never looked at me again. I could tell she loathed me. Shouldn’t I want to bring my dog home to comfort her? How could I leave her in a crate at the vet? Eight hundred dollars vs the comfort of having Lucy home? And the opportunity to care for her? I’m a cruel and heartless human being. I’m the bane of mankind.
And that’s exactly what Lucy was thinking when I came home the next afternoon. She was still lethargic but there was anger in her eyes. “I heard your voice when you came to get me yesterday,” her look told me. “I thought I was coming home. You left me. The Kind One came and got me like I knew she would. I’ve been thinking about you. Remember those vomit spots you cleaned up the other day. They were nothing. I was just warming up.” And she was.
I’m Cam Marston and I’m just trying to Keep It Real.