Stupid S*** I've Said Out Loud — Part II

This One Is Worse

#3 (Bonus): She Married Me Anyways

Ok, this is a continuation of my last post and has nothing to do with leadership or business. Or even systems.

But it clearly falls into the category of “stupid s*** I’ve said out loud.”

My wife, Debbie, and I met in 1991 through business. Our companies worked together in the technology industry when I was a sales and marketing manager at a software company and she was a product manager at Philips when they were in the PC business.

Debbie likes to joke that when we met she bundled my software on her hardware.

Now, as I share this story, I want you to imagine that it is the current month in which you are reading this post, and that Debbie and I are having a small dinner with a group of Stanford graduate students at a house somewhere in Palo Alto, California. Maybe the group of students is mostly or all women. There are, say, eight of them and the two of us. And someone asks us to tell the story of how the two of us met.

Debbie and I look at each other.

“Do you want to tell the story?” I ask innocently, knowing already what she will say.

“Oh, no. You do it. I’ll tell my version after.”

I can see the train wreck coming and there is nothing I can do to stop it.

“So, Debbie and I became friends through work over several years,” I begin. “When we met, we were both married to other people. First, she went through a divorce and moved from Montreal to Vancouver. At the same time I left my job and went to Stanford for graduate school. I entered school married but left divorced. During that time Debbie and I remained friends but life had taken us in different directions. She was in another country and we were both doing our own things.

“About a year after I graduated our relationship became a little more ‘friendly,’ but it wasn’t serious.”

“It was for me but not for you,” she interjects.

“Am I telling the story, or are you?”

“Oh, please continue,” Debbie coos. She can see it coming. She knows it’s coming. She anticipates its arrival. She leans back with a smile and enjoys watching it all unfold.

“Well, Debbie was living in another country, and we have an age difference. She’s older than I am. All I’m allowed to say is that that there is more than a 10 year difference in our ages, and I am not allowed to tell you how old I am.”

Debbie just keeps staring at me with the edges of her lips slightly turned up. Not really a smile — more of what one expects a female lion might feel when it knows it is going to make a kill.

“So, in the summer of 1995 Debbie had a close friend getting married and she had to bring a date to the wedding. She called and asked if I would be willing to come to Vancouver for the weekend as she wanted to bring someone that she knew well and was not just a random companion. I readily agreed — ‘Vancouver in the summertime? Hang out with my friend on a fun/romantic weekend away? Absolutely!’"

“I flew up from San Francisco and we had a wonderful time. At the wedding we even joked with each other that if we ever remarried what type of wedding we would each want. A big fun party – not some overly serious ceremony. Been there. Done that.”

The people at the table sit quietly listening, wondering where the story is headed.

“Well, on the Sunday night after the wedding Debbie and I were having dinner in a restaurant. And after the second or third glass of wine, I was feeling pretty good. I was thinking about how much I was enjoying my time with Debbie. So, I looked across the table and said….

“It’s too bad you aren’t 36 years old, because if you were, you’d be perfect.”

Mouths drop. Women audibly gasp. Debbie just looks at me and let’s it all happen.

“You said WHAT???” one woman throws at me.

“How could you?” accuses another.

“What were you thinking? Oh, my G-d!”

“Why are you married to him? What an a**hole!”

“Right?” says Debbie, innocently.

“Can I continue?” I ask.

“Oh, you think you are allowed to say anything ever again in this house at this dinner?”

Sometimes the group of women will actually move away from me and go over to Debbie and hug her, tell her that she deserves better, what a jerk I am, etc.

You get the picture.

“You know, if he had said he wanted me to change my hair color I could have done that,” Debbie offers. “I could go from a blonde to a redhead. I could even dress differently. But that? There was nothing I could do,” she laments a little forlornly, clearly exaggerating her pain.

“May I continue?” I ask.

“Oh, this should be good. I can’t wait to see what’s coming next,” says one of my students who I can tell no longer likes me.

Debbie just looks at me with satisfaction.

“So,” I continue, “Debbie looked across the table at me and replied, ‘Well, I’m not 36, so f*** you.’”

“Yes!”

“You deserved it!”

“You go girl!!!!”

High fives all around.

I stammer, “Please let me continue.” Over protestations and insults I manage to get out, “In that moment I realized that what I said did not come out exactly as I intended.”

“No kidding.”

“You think?”

“What were you thinking?”

“Do you even have a brain?”

“What could you possibly have intended?”

“What I was trying to say was that I was still a little shell-shocked from my divorce, and Debbie wanted to get married right away and start a family. I didn’t want to rush into something and make the same mistakes I had made in my first marriage. I wanted to spend time dating someone first and getting to know them. And she had other needs and constraints at that time.”

Now, at this point, the women are usually just staring at me wondering how I eventually got Debbie to marry me.

As you can see this story clearly falls into the category of “stupid s*** I’ve said out loud.” It has nothing to do with books or business or strategy or leadership.

And it is a moment that I have definitely had to own over the years.

But I will say this — the story told so far is not as good as how I talked Debbie into looking past this particular brain fart and giving me a shot. And, if you are interested, I can share that part of the journey some other time.

It was the best sales job I ever did in my whole life.

But that’s a story for another day.

And, yes, I said that s*** out loud.