Writing Boots

Apropos of last week’s popular post on the social crime of ghosting, here’s something I wrote in 2016, that I also feel strongly about. —DM

***

The Professional Speechwriters Association and the leadership communication professionals we consult with as part of our Professional Development Academy are not a movie theater. Or a barber shop. Or a bar and grill.

But say we were a bar and grill. And you stuck your head in and asked us what time the kitchen opens and you asked to see a menu and you asked us what the specials are?

When we told you, wouldn’t you feel obligated to say something in return? Wouldn’t you feel you ought to at least say, “Okay, I don’t like navy bean, I’ll try back Wednesday.” Or, “It smells like ammonia in here. Thanks anyway!” Or, “Ten dollars for a hamburger! What is this, downtown Omaha?”

What you wouldn’t do is simply close the door and disappear.

Which is what people routinely do to consultants—either because they have contempt for them or pity for them or both—when they ask for a proposal and then never get back.

It happens. All the time. And the consultants hound the would-be client for an answer—any answer, just to get “Ping Prospect” off the to-do list! And the prospect still never gets back.

Honestly, it’s confusing. And it’s rude.

And every time an inquiring client does this to us and our people at the PSA PDA, I’m going to send them a link to this blog post, which must conclude with the line I once overheard a construction contractor say to a client, at the top of the construction contractor’s lungs in front of the whole construction crew:

“Unprofessional? You think I’m unprofessional? Well fuck you!”

Mad Men-era joke:

In the confession booth, the guy tells the priest, “Father, last week I took three of our secretaries out to lunch. We all had a drink, then we had another drink and then another, and the next thing I knew, we’d checked into a hotel room and we balled all afternoon long!” Father says, “Sir, are you Catholic?” Guy says, “No.” Father asks, “So why are you telling me this?”

(Punchline at end of post.)

***

I had a hole in one the Saturday before last.

Why am I writing about this here? (And why has it taken me 10 days to do so?)

Let me see if I can write a few consecutive true sentences, to explain:

To begin: A hole in one is lucky. Yes, I hit a very good shot into the rather difficult par-three 15th hole at Lick Creek Golf Course in Pekin, Illinois last Saturday.

But by then I already had hit 15 or 20 other shots that day, probably just as good.

A hole in one at 57 years old is also unlucky. I’ve been playing golf since the seventh grade. By now I’ve hit many hundreds if not thousands of shots as good as the one I hit in the late afternoon light in Pekin, many of them on par-three holes. Some of them finished very close to the hole. One of them made a divot on the edge of the hole. None of them went into the hole.

This one happened to go in. Dumb luck, bad luck, good luck, mad luck. “About time,” my sardonic nephew sardonically texted.

And yet: When did go in, my three golf buddies, with whom I have been playing for more than 15 years and with whom I go on a Midwest golf trip every year, burst into screams and shouts that carried across the golf course. My back was to them. By the time I wheeled around, all three were charging at me. Stunned and a little afraid, I began to backpedal. They caught me. Yelling. Screaming. Hugging. Laughing. Like we’d just won the World Series.

Not me.

We.

I would pay $1,000 to reproduce the picture I have in my head of those three guys sprinting at me in total astonished jubilation. I don’t need it for me. I’d like to send it to them.

I happened to be in a foursome earlier this spring when another guy hit a hole in one. I felt exactly the same way my guys were acting now: Every bit as happy for the guy who hit it … and for having been there to see it … as the guy who hit it was for himself. If not more so.

Why is that?

I think about when the Cubs finally won the World Series, in 2016. I cried that night in disbelief that, after every single team I’d ever rooted for growing up in Cleveland and moving to Chicago lost in hapless misery or heartbreaking last-minute defeat, my finally team won. And maybe that was proof that God didn’t have real contempt for me, in the end. Maybe He—who I purport not to believe in, specifically—actually liked me, at least as much as the next guy. That insight came far less in the form of joy, than relief. (And hope?)

And then there was the next day, seeing all the Facebook messages and texts from friends, who also loved the Cubs, or who knew I loved the Cubs. Congratulations. Joy of their own. Shared relief. “So, this happened,” one of the big Cubs nuts said, showing a picture of the final score on the final scoreboard. And that was all she had to say. This happened. This happened.

I also published a book this year and a lot of people came to my book launch and treated me like a king. That was one thing, and I’ve written about what a magnificent thing that was, and how everyone should get a day in their life where everyone celebrates their best work. I felt something like survivor’s guilt the next morning. Why me?

This hole in one, less than two months later, was a different thing. This was about us. It was also about God, somehow. God, smiling. God, saying, “Oh, let him in.” Oh, let them in. And all of us recognizing the magic of that.

When I saw the other guy make a hole in one, I told him, possibly inappropriately and certainly too soon, “You know, a lot of guys put their hole in one in their obituary.”

If I have control over my obituary, I think I’ll put mine, in mine. I want my obituary to read, in roughly this order:

Accomplishments (work).

Accomplishments (family).

Accomplishments (friends).

And he got a hole in one. Not because he was a great golfer. But because God loved him.

And let’s include these details. All of them.

Guy says, “Oh, Father, I’m telling everybody!”

I wrote this so many years ago that “ghosting” was a new term at that point. Some things I’ve written seem overheated in hindsight. The longer I live, the more understated this piece seems to me. Good thing, because it’s also one of the essays in my book, An Effort to Understand. —DM

Some crimes receive too much punishment, and other crimes don’t receive enough. For instance, every boozer knows that hungover driving is twice as dangerous as buzzed driving, but perfectly legal.

Similarly, you can lose your livelihood for making a pass at a colleague. But you can commit the arguably more abusive act of “ghosting” someone you said you liked or loved, and no one can hold you accountable.

Ghosting is a new word, but not a new concept. 

Growing up, we all heard stories of people whose parents (usually fathers) disappeared or “ran off” when they were young. 

And long before Tinder, ghosting was one of the 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover: “Slip out the back, Jack.”

It was how I resigned my first job in Chicago—near the end of my first week as the “night waterman” at a public golf course. After four endless midnight-to-eight shifts with a deranged Vietnam veteran as my only companion, I simply turned off the alarm on the fifth night and didn’t go in. I remember writhing in my bed as I listened to the voice of the disappointed superintendent, who had hired me (and paid to have me drug tested) earlier that same week. He said he’d send my check in the mail.

I only had to feel that way once to realize I would never do that to anyone—boss, friend, lover or even enemy—ever again. I think it’s one of the most violent things a person can do to another, to break off a relationship without telling why, or saying goodbye.

And yet it’s become a near standard practice in online dating, where people see one another as profiles first, sex partners second and people only on the off chance that things happen to go really well. A dear friend of mine got ghosted not long ago and it made me feel just about the same way I bet I’d feel if the bastard had hit her. Not just protective of her, but protective of us—people with consciences who are supposed to be doing what Kurt Vonnegut said we were all put here to do: “Help each other through this thing, whatever it is.”

If you feel strongly enough to break off a relationship—or quit a job or resign a client or end any significant partnership—I believe it’s something close to a Law of Communication that you should explain why you’ve done it. So the other person can learn something from hearing you say it, and so you can learn from hearing yourself say it—and so you don’t make another person more generally cynical and lonely and despairing in the reliability and goodness of other people, you nihilistic, cowardly, no-account creep.

Littering is against the law. Harassment is against the law. Reckless endangerment is against the law. Torture is against the law. Fraud is against the law. Ghosting should be against the law.