I was an accident, but then again so were Post-It Notes and look how much better our office lives are for that.
I remember the very day that my mother gathered up all of the courage she could, probably doing so every day for the previous 17 years to finally break it to me that I was the accidental result of a short lived affair she had before she met and married the man I knew as Dad. She then explained how Dad then legally adopted me and blessed me with my very complicated last name. Apparently I was the last one in the family to know this secret including my younger brother.
What amused me most was how scared everyone in the family was with how I would react. Even months after the news I would still have relatives come up, do that little head bob that seems to always accompany the question, and ask “How are you doing with the news?” Their reaction confused me much more than the original confession. As a matter of fact I think I responded to my mom with “Hmmm, that explains a lot”. (My brother and I are total opposites.) The news, while interesting, didn’t really matter much to me.
Somehow in our world we have muddled up the word accident to be the combination of the actual event as well as its unintended result; Post-It Notes were an accident, that pregnancy was an accident, Joe was an accident. No, Post-It Notes were the result of a failed designed. Post-It Notes themselves are amazing! Continue Reading…