Alan Fox

My friend Jimmy called recently to tell me he was upset.

“Alan,” he said, “I received a nasty email from someone in your office.”

I asked Jimmy to forward it to me.  After reading the email myself I thought if I had received it originally I would not have been bothered at all.

I recently read in the Ask Amy column (I assure you I don’t read that column every day) about a family feud.  The writer said she and her two siblings hadn’t spoken for years.

Why?

Because ten years before, her older brother arrived late for their family Thanksgiving dinner and the turkey had already been carved.   He felt disrespected, stormed out, and the three siblings avoided each other ever since.

I read a news article today that Millennials are known for being pragmatic.  I think that’s a good thing.

So, how are these ideas related?

How thin is your skin?  Do you take offense easily or often?  Have you ever severed a relationship over a relatively minor offense?  And, upon reflection, was it worth it?

Our bodies have skin to keep the bad stuff out.  But if our physical or emotional skin is too thin, the bad stuff will more likely harm us along with other things that are probably just not worth worrying about.  Emotionally, I believe in having a very thick skin.  That is pragmatic.

I used to believe that if someone had a serious look on their face they were angry.  Not only angry, but angry with me.  This used to bother me a lot, but over many years I developed an antidote.  I now simply ask, “Are you angry?”  If their answer is “no” I believe them.  If the answer is “yes” I follow up with, “Are you angry with me?”

Almost always they are either not angry, or not angry with me.

But back to that Thanksgiving dinner.  If a guest was angry because I had carved the turkey before they arrived, I would apologize and invite them to join us for the rest of the meal.  If they stormed out, I would be sad they had left, but I would also continue to enjoy the party.  Why should their unreasonable behavior spoil my evening? Sadly, in the Ask Amy example above, a single overreaction kept a family from enjoying each other’s companionship for years.

Most of my close friendships have endured for decades. One reason is that I intentionally have a thick emotional skin. I am not easily offended, and if I am slighted by something someone has said or done I try to determine if the offense was intentional. We have so many different ways of communicating these days with texting and emails as well as phone calls – there easily can be misunderstandings.

If someone has insulted me intentionally, I try to figure out why. If I did something offensive, then I apologize and try to make amends. But if they persist in insulting me, I ask them to contact me if they want to solve the problem.  Meanwhile, I pragmatically continue to enjoy my life, giving people the benefit of the doubt.

Don’t doubt the benefit.

Alan

About ten years ago a new Chinese restaurant named “Green Apple” opened several blocks from my office.  Their location was barely visible from the street.  I don’t remember how I found it, but I did.

They offered a lunch special with soup, salad, main course, and rice at a thirty percent introductory discount.  That certainly appealed to me.  More importantly, the ingredients were fresh, the seasonings delicious, and their service excellent.

Several months later I was disappointed when the discount disappeared, but I was hooked.  By then I had become a regular.  Today, when I tell my wife that I am going to Green Apple for lunch she will ask me to bring her home their outstanding Kung Pao Tofu.

My friend Deborah and I have lunch together once a week. We alternate between our three favorite restaurants.  One is Green Apple.  After many years of enjoying a culinary status quo, I suggested that we try a recently opened French bistro located across from Green Apple.

Spoiler alert.  We do not plan to return.

The place was empty, other than the young French couple who had opened the restaurant.  The menu was difficult to read and understand, the food was good but not great (buckwheat crepe anyone?), and overall the experience didn’t warrant a return visit.

Years ago there was a hamburger restaurant near downtown Los Angeles that I loved.  When they opened a satellite location in Encino, not far from my office, I dropped by for lunch.  The food was excellent, similar to the downtown location, but the manager behind the cash register was rude.  I remember that he spoke disrespectfully to a man who had come in with a large party.  He then added injury to insult by saying, “If you like the food you’ll come back.  If not, you won’t.”

Wrong. Perhaps he was someone’s brother-in-law, but clearly this manager had never been trained in customer service. I predicted the Encino branch would last no more than one year.  In fact, it closed three months later, no doubt after insulting many never-to-return customers.  No surprise there.

I live in a city where restaurants are outstanding and highly competitive. Isn’t that like life itself?

We all have choices of who we hang out with, and from my point of view the only thing we do with friends every day is customer service.  Are we pleasant?  Do we listen?  Do we let our friends know that we really care about them?

Worth thinking about, and perhaps paying it forward.

Alan

Thanks for all of your thoughtful notes and comments on last week’s blog about my mother, “The Girl Behind the Camera.”   One reader shared his struggle to reconstruct his own family history, now that both of his parents are unavailable.  His father had written a family history, but my friend found it “dry as dust.”  I’m not surprised – this has happened to several other friends who wrote hard-to-read family histories.  So when one of my children suggested that I write our family history, I thought about what that might look like.

My first three rules of writing are, Make it interesting, Make it interesting, and Make it interesting.  So I’m not going to ever write the long family story.  I’ll stick to my standard blog length – 300 to 600 words – and only include those events that stand out in my heart and mind as notable and worth sharing.

One of my earliest memories is from April 12, 1945 (I asked Siri for the exact date).

In 1940 my parents bought a home for $5,700. They lived in that house until my father moved to be closer to me in 2003. Dad was proud because it was on a hillside, and our residence was an “upside down” house with the bedrooms on the floor below the entry.  My brother and I shared one bedroom, my parents shared the other.

I was five years old on that memorable April day in 1945. My mother and I were standing in the shared bathroom between the bedrooms and she was crying.

“Why are you crying, Mommy?”

She tried to control her tears.  “Because . . . because the president just died.”  She was referring to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who was first inaugurated on March 4, 1933.  He served four terms as President.

I remember her tears because even at a young age I was sensitive to the emotional state of others.  I often feel that I know a person’s mood when they enter the room.  Of course, in 1945 I was very young and still learning the best way to respond to someone else’s sadness. Since then, I have learned how to deal with emotions, but in some ways I will always be learning.

I don’t remember exactly how I tried to comfort my mother, but I knew “The President” was someone important to her, and I knew what death meant – that he would never come back.

My father always said that his earliest memory was of people celebrating the end of World War I when he was three years old.  I’m still amazed that as recently as last year I was talking to a man who actually remembered an event that happened a full century before.

As Shakespeare wrote, “Brevity is the soul of wit.”  So I won’t say more here, other than to mention that I have been reflecting on my earliest memories, and found many more than I thought I would have.  Of course, memory is subjective – which is something to think about as well.

I don’t remember ever hearing my parents fight (although I know they did). But I I’ll never forget my mother crying.

Perhaps you have memories you’ve carried your entire life. Feel free to share. I’d love to hear from you.  (Best email address is alan@acfpm.com)

Alan