Tag: repair

Posted on

Decision with a Capital ‘D’

About halfway through the death march of the Broncos’ last season, my brother-in-law Brad said he knew just what Denver needed.

“They ought to get Sean Payton at coach,” he said. “He knows how to get the most out of a quarterback like Russell Wilson. It’d be a great fit.”

We laughed and bantered and said, sure, that would be interesting. But it wasn’t going to happen. Too high a price, too many other teams likely to be interested, most of them with better prospects. Everyone knew the sort of coach that came to the Orange Crash these days: rookies and maybes, not former Super Bowl champions. Right?

Well.

Maybe I should let Brad buy a lottery ticket or two.

As you know if you’ve even casually glanced at a Denver sports page these days, the Saint has come marchin’ in. Naturally, his selection also kicked off a debate, because if there’s one thing Bronco fans love almost as much as a win, it’s an argument.  For the pro-Payton bunch, it’s the hiring of a proven winner with the prestige and tools to rebuild Denver. For the “punt on Payton” people, it’s mortgaging future draft picks against an uncertain present, one who’s been out of the game for a while and was right at the storm center of “Bountygate” a decade ago.

But good, bad or ugly, the choice has been made to shake things up. And that’s bigger news than Payton himself.

It’s easy to keep doing the same things in the same way. We see it in sports teams, in business and government, even in ourselves. And when times get hard, we often double down on it. Why risk what you still have? Best to play it safe, turtle up and weather the storm, right?

The trouble is, it often doesn’t work. Sometimes it means you’re trying to get out of a situation with the same approach that got you into it. Other times, it means you’re postponing any decision and just waiting for things to improve. But not deciding is a decision itself, and one that takes the initiative out of your hands.

To fix something, you have to risk breaking it. Commit to the action. Take the chance. Turn off the route you’re on, even if it feels like a major detour.

“The longest way round,” Alexander MacLaren once wrote, “is sometimes the shortest way home.”

Yes, it can be a gamble. Action in the face of uncertainty often is. It’s uncomfortable, not least because it exposes you to criticism. Failing by the numbers, after all, shows you knew how to “do it right” – you’re part of the club. Taking a chance that doesn’t work turns everyone else into an expert on what you SHOULD have done.

But when the conventional just perpetuates the cycle, it doesn’t make sense to keep committing to the same old three-yards-and-a-cloud-of-dust. Then it’s time to decide. And risk.

Will this risk pay off for Denver? It’s too early to say either way. (I knew I shouldn’t have sent my crystal ball to the cleaners this week.) But it’s an attempt to break beyond the mediocre, to literally change the game.

That’s not a bad model. On the field or off it. After all, failing doesn’t have to mean failure … as long as it leads to the next attempt.

And if this one fails, I’m sure there’ll be plenty of fans ready to tell the Broncos exactly what that next attempt should be.

Right, Brad?

Posted on

Crash Landing

Before Disney and the heirs of Jim Henson sic an army of googly-eyed lawyers on me, I need to be clear about one thing. Cookie Monster did not eat my computer. But his disco past has a lot to answer for.

Yes, you read that right. And no, I have not been eating any brownies of questionable origin.

Like many celebrities, the Muppets cut a disco album in the ’70s. Two disco albums, in fact, which should demonstrate just how close to Armageddon the world was teetering in those days. And in the second album, with the shocking title of“Sesame Disco!”, the Big Blue One himself took the mic for the most heart-rending disco ballad since “Disco Duck.”

I speak, of course, of the immortal “Me Lost Me Cookie at the Disco.”

There are portions of one’s childhood that remain unforgettable. And if we ever perfect mechanical telepathy, scientists will discover that entire sectors of my brain are permanently tattooed with a thumping rhythm and the words “Me lost me cookie at the DIS-co! Me lost me cookie in the BOO-GIE MU-SIC!” So naturally, as an adult, I used the vast and awesome power of the Internet to inflict this on others.

My wife Heather nearly lost her own cookies laughing. It became a running family joke, something to dial up when nothing of less epic silliness would do. Which made it inevitable, of course, that we would introduce it to Missy.

At this point, there are three important things to understand about our developmentally disabled ward. Missy loves the Muppets. Missy also loves disco.

But Missy does not necessarily love the Muppets singing disco.

And so, when I mixed it into an evening YouTube session, Missy giggled. Then smiled. Then decided the joke had gone on long enough and punched the power button.

Now, even in these permissive modern times, there are still a few things you just don’t do. You don’t pull a car key out of the ignition at 80 mph. You don’t wear black and silver at a Broncos rally. And you really don’t turn off a computer in mid-stream.

“Wait!”

Too late.

When I brought everything back up, my word-processing files were among the walking wounded. About half of them had to be saved into a new format, document by painstaking document, in order to be usable at all.

I have seen many a parent recite under their breath “I love my child … I love my child … I love my child.” I think I’m beginning to understand.

But here’s the funny thing. It was worth it.

It was worth it because of the time spent laughing with Missy, however wrong a turn it may have taken.

It was worth it because of the enforced trip down memory lane. As I patched and ported my files, I discovered columns I’d forgotten I’d written, scripts I hadn’t performed in years, even parodies that made me smile one more time.

Most of all, it was worth it for the chance to underscore, without mortal injury, two fundamental truths of parenting: that accidents happen, and that even when they do, your people are still more important than your things.

Hug, forgive and learn.

I think if more of us remembered that, this would be a nicer world.

There’s still a few repairs to make. But it’ll be OK. Both the family and the machine will survive to make more memories, even if it occasionally takes a minor crisis to do so.

Sometimes, that’s just the way the Cookie Monster crumbles.