Have you ever looked at your alarm clock on a Monday morning and felt like you’re staring into the face of your own personal jailer? I sure have – more times than I care to admit back in my hardware store days. There’s a special kind of misery that comes from knowing you’ve got four […]

We’ve all been there, haven’t we? You’re in the middle of a team meeting, and your coworker, let’s call him Chad – bless his heart – is presenting a project. He confidently states that the client wants the new logo to be “deep purple.” But honey, you know for a fact the client’s brief said […]

Here’s a little story from my days back at the hardware store – my favorite source of life lessons, of course. A fella came in, Mr. Abernathy I think his name was, looking more flustered than a cat in a room full of rocking chairs. He had this big ol’ toolbox he’d just bought, and […]

Remember old man Higgins from down the block (not sure why you would…)? Everybody said he had two left feet when it came to dancing – that his stiff personality was a roadblock. But one Saturday night at the town square dance, something shifted. He wasn’t trying to be anybody else; he was just being […]

Alright now, let me tell you a little story about my own son. When he was about nine years old, I decided we’d build that birdhouse he’d been pestering me about. Now, in my mind, this was a simple afternoon of sawdust and smiles. In reality, it turned into an impromptu physics lesson on why […]

I remember the day I hired young Billy to stock shelves at my old hardware store. The boy was bright-eyed and eager, full of ambition to “climb the ladder.” He saw his starting wage as a pit stop on the way to the corner office. One afternoon, I found him staring at a jar of […]

Stop me if you’ve heard this one! I was down at the hardware store one fine afternoon when Mrs. Gable came rushing in, face as red as a ripe tomato. She was clutching her head with both hands and said, “Bojangles! My boy Bobby, bless his heart, just superglued the family cat to the living […]