Life-changing events

There are moments in any person's life where, upon reflection, you realize: How would my life have been different had this event not happened? What if that event had happened slightly differently? Let me bullet-point a few of my 'life's reflection points.' Then, rather go into detail here, I welcome the reader to use any or all of these as starting points for a good story in a conversation with me in the future, oral, not just verbal.

Accident in the Mazda RX-7 on Route 59 in the snow in the hills ten miles south of Lawrence en route to Tulsa and Longview, December 1981. I had finished exams and was headed for Longview, with a stop for a day or two in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The accident cancelled the Tulsa stop and probably ended one of the more promising relationships in my life.

Getting hit by a car while riding my moped on my way to Sunday Mass at the Kansas Union, in 1984 or 1985. I hit the front corner panel of a car pulling out in front of me, took a 360 degree roll, landed on my butt, walked away and went to church. I think I had one small rip in my pants. I had the moped shop keep the moped rather than fix it. But it put me off mopeds forever, even after I had just invested in a bigger, faster, Vespa-like unit that had empowered me to expand my use of this gas-sipping, easy-to-park-anywhere scooter.

Traveling to Penn State with Marnie Fischer for a football weekend with her friends in fall 1974 and casually picking up doctoral application from Kern Hall. I was just looking to get away from the boredom of Binghamton and to enjoy a more traditional collegiate weekend -- unlike any I had had in my previous five years of college -- at a big university. Marnie was willing to travel and she had friends and a place where we could stay in State College. I met Richard Henry that weekend. Richard would become my last university room mate two years later, on Fairmount Street, where we shared a slightly upscale one-bedroom apartment.

Road trip with Peggy Piccoli to Buffalo and Binghamton in early August 1978, for family time in Hamburg and Jack Duffy wedding in Binghamton, just before I left for job in Kansas later that month. This was my last gasp at seeing old haunts and even older friends, in western New York and the Southern Tier, before driving off for my first real job at the University of Kansas at the end of the month. In between was a Academy of Management convention in San Francisco, another 'bucket list' item, even before I had ever heard of that term. I remember my PEU presentation in a large conference hall before what might have been my largest academic audience ever. And the projector bulb burned out early in may talk. Chuck Manz and I rode the trolley cars and took a ferry across the bay, past Alcatraz to Sausalito. And I recall my last day, where I had to check out of the hotel and kill time nursing a beer or two in Lefty O'Doul's bar across the street before taxiing out to the airport for my first red eye flight ever, back to Pittsburgh and Penn State, to defend my dissertation, pack, and head out to Lawrence, via Cleveland.

Across-the-hall office mate Don Nichols asked me, "Have you ever been to Wyoming?" in late winter 1982, prompting my application for a visiting position in Laramie for academic year 1982-83. I said, "no" and from there it quickly moved to an application, an invitation to visit, a very short interview (including a trip to a topless bar at a desolate spot then miles north of Laramie), a short night, a dawn flight, a return flight from Laramie, and a day of classes, before then flying from MCI to Dallas for an interview with First National Bank. One night in the Aldophus, a morning interview, and back to Lawrence that same Friday night.