A Kosher Dating Odyssey: One Former Texas Baptist's Quest for a Naughty & Nice Jewish Girl by van Wallach Page B
Authors: van Wallach
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however, the stars aligned. We arranged to meet in Boston, where I would be on a business trip for several days. I took Amtrak up the day before to settle into my hotel and then stroll around the Harvard campus. I sat on the steps of a building, looking at the students and parents, and thought life was pretty good. An interested project beckoned; the Lark and I would finally meet, and the mid-summer weather made me think of Robert Frost poetry.
The next day I bopped to my company’s Boston office and waited for other team members to arrive from New York for a big marketing project. I noted an email about a conference call at 11:30, something about changes in the marketing function. I knew executives had been examining the department, and I figured there would be people coming and going, shifting boxes on the org chart, nothing dramatic.
My colleagues from New York breezed in at 11:25, with just enough time to grab a cup of coffee and settle in for the call, which, oddly enough, was listen-only. Nobody could talk, only listen.
We dialed in and the speaker got right to the point. Our marketing function hadn’t been working the way the leaders wanted and the company was going in a new direction for the work we did. Our services were no longer needed. We would be hearing from HR.
End of call.
Lark’s Lament: Instead of dinner with the Lark, I packed up my former office, including the Russian and Yiddish posters seen on the wall.
We sat there, stupefied. All of us had been laid off. Almost our entire department, nationwide, was wiped out in a listen-only conference call that lasted only four minutes.
As you can imagine, chaos ensued. We had to tell the client-facing team in the Boston office we had just been laid off and couldn’t work on the project. Our cellphones hummed as we frantically called family members and rearranged our travel plans. I called the Lark and told her that our plans were star-crossed and that dinner would have to wait. She was as disappointed as I was, but understood completely. I called other obscure objects of thwarted affection and left voice mails about the Beantown slaughter so they would feel sorry for me and want to talk to me (and they did, as I turned lemons into lemonade).
I returned to New York and found myself in demand for job interviews, given my skill set. I had a first call from one firm on September 11, of all days, and began working there in October on my birthday, of all days. The spell of unemployment passed quickly. Another year would pass before the Lark and I would finally meet in Mystic, Connecticut, but we connected and have met several times since then. We are both good listeners.
Meanwhile, the Listen-Only Massacre became a dark legend in New York professional-services circles. Marketers and headhunters talk about it with horrified fascination to this day.
* * *
The Divine Miz R Politely Requests the Presence of Your Company
Miz Rutherford and I connected in that regional U.S. way, given her gracious Southern upbringing in the land of moss-drenched oaks, mint juleps, firefly-watching from the front porch, black-eyed peas on New Year’s Day (Jan. 1, not Rosh Hashanah), expressions of “Land sakes alive, honey chil’!” and Lynyrd Skynyrd albums.
Both of us fell off the turnip truck and landed in Gotham City decades ago. Miz Rutherford (AKA The Divine Miz R) has lived in the Northeast as long as I have and fits right in to Yankeeland. But once we met, the Southernisms became a running joke throughout our friendship.
My first date with Miz Rutherford proved memorable. We got together on a Friday after work for a light dinner at an outdoor café, nothing unusual about that, but she had also asked me if I wanted to go to “something else.” She was a little cagey about what exactly “something else” was. Something thought provoking, perhaps emotionally challenging. As a veteran of a long-running men’s group and even some twelve-step meetings, I was open
The next day I bopped to my company’s Boston office and waited for other team members to arrive from New York for a big marketing project. I noted an email about a conference call at 11:30, something about changes in the marketing function. I knew executives had been examining the department, and I figured there would be people coming and going, shifting boxes on the org chart, nothing dramatic.
My colleagues from New York breezed in at 11:25, with just enough time to grab a cup of coffee and settle in for the call, which, oddly enough, was listen-only. Nobody could talk, only listen.
We dialed in and the speaker got right to the point. Our marketing function hadn’t been working the way the leaders wanted and the company was going in a new direction for the work we did. Our services were no longer needed. We would be hearing from HR.
End of call.
Lark’s Lament: Instead of dinner with the Lark, I packed up my former office, including the Russian and Yiddish posters seen on the wall.
We sat there, stupefied. All of us had been laid off. Almost our entire department, nationwide, was wiped out in a listen-only conference call that lasted only four minutes.
As you can imagine, chaos ensued. We had to tell the client-facing team in the Boston office we had just been laid off and couldn’t work on the project. Our cellphones hummed as we frantically called family members and rearranged our travel plans. I called the Lark and told her that our plans were star-crossed and that dinner would have to wait. She was as disappointed as I was, but understood completely. I called other obscure objects of thwarted affection and left voice mails about the Beantown slaughter so they would feel sorry for me and want to talk to me (and they did, as I turned lemons into lemonade).
I returned to New York and found myself in demand for job interviews, given my skill set. I had a first call from one firm on September 11, of all days, and began working there in October on my birthday, of all days. The spell of unemployment passed quickly. Another year would pass before the Lark and I would finally meet in Mystic, Connecticut, but we connected and have met several times since then. We are both good listeners.
Meanwhile, the Listen-Only Massacre became a dark legend in New York professional-services circles. Marketers and headhunters talk about it with horrified fascination to this day.
* * *
The Divine Miz R Politely Requests the Presence of Your Company
Miz Rutherford and I connected in that regional U.S. way, given her gracious Southern upbringing in the land of moss-drenched oaks, mint juleps, firefly-watching from the front porch, black-eyed peas on New Year’s Day (Jan. 1, not Rosh Hashanah), expressions of “Land sakes alive, honey chil’!” and Lynyrd Skynyrd albums.
Both of us fell off the turnip truck and landed in Gotham City decades ago. Miz Rutherford (AKA The Divine Miz R) has lived in the Northeast as long as I have and fits right in to Yankeeland. But once we met, the Southernisms became a running joke throughout our friendship.
My first date with Miz Rutherford proved memorable. We got together on a Friday after work for a light dinner at an outdoor café, nothing unusual about that, but she had also asked me if I wanted to go to “something else.” She was a little cagey about what exactly “something else” was. Something thought provoking, perhaps emotionally challenging. As a veteran of a long-running men’s group and even some twelve-step meetings, I was open
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