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Well I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again.
There comes a time in all our lives when we have to say goodbye.
An expected farewell came up this last week, and I’m pretty sure I’m looking at another one which I didn’t see coming.
Let’s start with what we knew was about to happen.
Last spring I got a late night text from a colleague who was vacationing in Italy. “I swear I had nothing to do with the death of the Pope”.
A week later, I arrived at the office to find a souvenir magnet depicting (or is that “de-dick-ting”?) just a specific portion of the statue of David.
The magnet was deemed NSFW and was relocated to a location outside the office and onto the fridge out in the garage.
It was positioned to secure the bottom portion of a poster featuring a green induhvidual with a series of holes approximately nine millimeters in diameter scattered on the torso.
The head of the poster features magnetized body parts from a Mr. Potato Head play set that managed to stay around the house long after the kids left.
Within weeks of the magnet’s arrival—following an awkward transaction involving a gift-shop clerk and my colleague’s bulk purchase—events began to unfold.
One of our cars was totaled in a wreck.
The Lord promoted Phil Robertson.
Scott Adams announced that he would be signing off soon.
Here’s the deal about Scott Adams.
I’ve been following his work for well over thirty years.
Naturally it started with Dilbert, the comic strip that got him famous.
Looking around the Blogatorium, it’s obvious that I was an avid participant in the merchandising arm that spawned from Adams’ mockery of cubicle-born nonsense.
Fast forward a decade or two to 2015 and Adams began podcasting.
For those of you not in the know, a podcast is radio programs delivered via the internet. Don’t be fooled though. The underlying reason we have podcasts is that they serve as a delivery mechanism for sports betting advertisements.
Listening to those daily podcasts that Adams published gave me a new set of tools I could use to navigate….
Life.
In the following years I put a lot of those tools to work. Just last week I found myself repeating Adams’ words and ideas while trying to help a loved one through a difficult set of circumstances.
I also made it a point to read the non-fiction, non-Dilbert books that Adams has written in recent years.
Scott Adams passed away this last week, and he will be missed.
Much like the passing of Phil Robertson last spring, this was expected. It wasn’t a sudden exit like that of Charlie Kirk.
Even though I was prepared for the Adams’ passing, I find an Elbonian shaped hole has appeared in my life.
All is not lost though.
Between those books and the community he fostered on the Locals platform, there won’t be a shortage of insight anytime soon.
A few days after Adams’ passing, I noticed something else was missing.
It wasn’t the shape of Elbonia either.
Instead it was the shape of a strategically placed magnet which depicted a specific portion from the statue of David, which eerily reminded me of that one time when the Pope died.
You see, the magnet and the ventilated poster it supports serves as a backboard for the recycle bin we keep in the garage.
We toss our bottles, cans, and empty tubes of M&M Minis in there so they can wait for their connection to the big blue bin which greets the trash truck at the curb on Tuesdays.
My assessment is that the magnet had been knocked off the fridge, into the bin, and then off to its great reward at the curb last week.
So much for the poster on the fridge being anatomically correct.
And so, I’m saying “Goodbye”.
Goodbye to Phil Robertson.
Goodbye to Charlier Kirk.
Goodbye to Scott Adams.
The work these gentlemen did while they were with us was invaluable. I will continue to put what I learned from them to work every day in an effort to be useful to humanity.
Post script:
It occurred to me that the magnet may have landed in the big blue bin after the last weekly pick-up.
If that’s the case, then the sculpted piece of junk (see what I did there?) could be nestled between an unopened DirectTV mailer, an empty bottle of Diet Dr. Pepper, and the remnants of some Mr. Clean.
It’s not like there would be any security camera footage of me rifling through the recyclables looking for something like that.
Is there?
