Even funny in retrospect...

Do you ever reflect back on something that happened years ago and laugh like it was yesterday? That happened to me this morning...I don't know what the thought tangent was that got me started, but I remembered an incident from back in my Vineyard days and laughed so hard I nearly drove off the road....

Back then - and perhaps now, maybe someone can comment and let me know - the whole place ran on voice mail. Email was big too, but voice mails flew like crazy. If you pressed a certain code, you could voice mail all 120 people on staff. These were only done for official business once in a while (because not much was applicable to all of us).

There were only 3 or 4 of us on staff at the time who really learned to harness the voice mail system for mischief...Andy Ransdell, Allen Fuller, Kevin Peyton and myself. Allen once left an all-staff, in a perfect Allen Fuller imitation, announcing that he had spare Yanni tickets if anyone wanted them.

The incident that left me cracking up this morning was centered around Kyle Wade's birthday. I think he was 30 or 32 - no older than that. Having been the guy who hired Kyle (my singular most genius act, second to hiring Danielle), I decided to celebrate with an all staff voice mail, encouraging people to stop by his cube to wish him a happy 40th.

For weeks, Kyle was approached by people who said "I didn' t know you were 40!", forcing him to explain, "Uh, I'm not...", leaving the people with the awkward realization that for a moment, they thought he really WAS.

Ok, well it was funny at the time. And it was funny about 30 minutes ago, driving down Red Bridge Road, too.