It pays to have friends in high places.
Eric Schurenberg, a neighbor and friend of long-standing, has seen fit to cast me as a poster child for the road less taken to riches. Since I am not rich, and hardly a good example of anything, except perhaps for my prowess in some unmentionable activities, I allow him a poet’s license to use me as he sees fit.
Eric is the Managing Editor of Money Magazine, and I suppose he knows that most of his readers are thinking about how to acquire ungodly sums of money. After all, anyone with even the slightest acquaintance with human nature knows that most of us are fantasizing about our future wealth at least 50% of the time.
The rest of the time, of course, we’re fantasizing about unmentionable activities.
On page 16 of the July edition of Money Magazine, Eric writes the following:
“I watched with a mixture of concern and awe as a friend, Sims Wyeth, walked out of a perfectly good vice president’s post at a consulting firm, in large part because he thought he could make more money on his own as a public speaking coach for executives. It took him six nail-biting months to land his first customer. But now that his business is thriving–with clients like KPMG, McKinsey & Co. and Pfizer–Wyeth can be philosophical about why he took the risk. ‘If you asked me to choose between being bored and being terrified,’ he says, ‘I’d rather be terrified.'”
Let me say that Eric was right to be concerned, while his awe was probably similar to the feelings most people have when watching Evil Knievel jump his motorcycle over three-dozen parked school buses.
I can say in my own defense, however, that I have managed to be born with–well, a pewter spoon in my mouth–spit it out with disgust, enjoy a career as an actor, teach several graduate and undergraduate courses in theater and communication, raise a child and send her to Yale, and remain happily married to a woman who has been called by the New York Times “mercurial.”
And all while sailing through the air straddling a rocket with a landscape dotted with school buses far below.
It’s the only way I could keep up with my friends in high places.