johnmaconline

As far as I know, this is not a drill. The building is on fire. This is real.

The fire alarms blink and sound their klaxons. Is that smoke? I might be the last one left in the building. The “Fire!” guy is long gone. I don’t see anybody else.

I can, and probably should guarantee my safety by immediately evacuating. That means running up the two flights of stairs and outside onto the busy city sidewalk. I’m soaking wet, wearing only my jammers and a towel, and it’s 15 degrees.

And then what? The building is on fire. My clothes will be toast. Or, if not toast, who knows when I could get back in.

And then what again? What am I gonna do soaking wet without clothes? Walk the four blocks across center city in 15-degree weather? Walk into my office? Dude, I’m essentially naked.

Is this guaranteeing my safety?

Another possibility flashes into my mind. I can chance it. Take a quick duck into the maze of a locker room, which is just one floor up from the dungeon, and on my way out. At the very least, I can grab my stuff.

I decide to chance it. Really I had no choice.

Vanity versus death.

For a couple years, I worked in center city Philly — 18th and JFK. At lunchtime, I’d make my way past Love park to the gym at 15th and Arch. It’s an ancient YMCA building with a pool in the basement. 

Lap swimming is a form of sensory deprivation. Not in the total absence of senses, but in the inability to hear anything beyond the sloshing of your arms through the water and the inability to see anything past the radius of those arms, except some hazy, amoebic glow. 

Consequently, you find yourself retreating internally, oblivious to what’s happening around you. There’s really no other way. 

On this mid-winter day, deep in the throws of this sensory deprivation, I became vaguely aware of a flashing light. I stopped to pick my head up and look around. There it was — the flashing light came from the fire alarm on the wall. 

For how long? Impossible to know, but I wasn’t nervous. Because I, like you, have participated in hundreds of fire drills throughout my 50+ years. So I drug my annoyed self onto the pool deck, fully expecting to hide in the locker room until we got the all-clear. 

But something happened on my way to the locker room. A guy ran past me, yelling, “Fire! Get out, now!”

Uh oh.

There I stand, dripping wet in nothing but jammers and my towel. It’s 15-degrees outside. The building is on fire. I’m in the basement.

The250 is a project about stories. 

Specifically, how personal history colors the lens through which we remember and interpret those stories. Because ultimately, we see and understand the world around us through our collection of stories. They leave an indelible mark on what we believe to be good and true, whose side we’re on, and how we see our own role in this world. 

“People don’t believe what you tell them.
They rarely believe what you show them.
They often believe what their friends tell them.
They always believe what they tell themselves.”

Seth Godin

And we’re squarely focused on exploring that last line: what we tell ourselves. 

Our stories are about the memory of emotions, sometimes to the detriment of the memory of facts. We often twist, embellish, or create “facts” to match the memory of those emotions, which is why the passage of time is the enemy of an eyewitness in the judicial system. 

But we’re really good at remembering the emotions attached to a moment and our personal context in that moment. What was happening in our life at that time? Who was there? How did we think of ourselves? What change did that moment bring about? 

As our journey continues, we add more context, personal history, and outcomes. With a proper mindset, we can and should reinterpret and even change our stories. 

We always believe what we tell ourselves. This here is the uncovering of the stories I tell myself. 

I totally believe that authorities can coerce false confessions, and I’m thankful for those who work on behalf of the victims. I believe it because it almost happened to me right here.

I almost confessed. I really did. But to what? I hadn’t done anything other than keep my mouth shut, but I just wanted it all to stop. Right now. I would’ve said just about anything.

But I stuck to the truth, probably because I just didn’t know what else to say. The next time I got coherent words out, it was something whiny like, “I didn’t. I really didn’t. But I knew some people were.”

“OK, who was it?”

Wait, was this a glimmer of hope? Throw somebody else under the bus, and maybe you’ll be free!

So, I did. I gave them Derek, and then I couldn’t stop the gusher. It was like an out-of-body experience. But I guess it worked. If that’s what you want to call it. I walked out of there with nothing but a deep wound on my soul.

And that’s when I knew they were just fishing, and I was a live one. Maybe somebody had given them my name (like I had Derek’s), or maybe they just pulled me in because of my friendship with Derek (who they already nabbed). They were just soaking me for information and using fear as the mechanism.

I get it. I understand why authorities do it. It works.

But I also understand how this authoritative intimidation can lead to false confessions. It left a deep impression on me. Every time I see something about questionable confessions, I wonder.

Now standing in the security office in front of several stern-faced adults, I was shaking. I’m sure my face read like a book because I knew what this was about — it was about the system.

And this was the reckoning.

Even though I knew about and had seen the system in action first-hand, I was too afraid and prudish to have tried it myself. I hadn’t stolen a single dollar. Even if I had thought about trying it, fear and guilt kept me on the sidelines.

I hadn’t done anything wrong other than not squealing (yet), but here I was.

Mirrored sunglasses, staring directly at me since I walked into this chasm of hell, cuts right to the chase, “We know you’ve been stealing from the cash register. Now’s the time to come clean. If you do, we’ll go easy.”

Somehow, I choke out a feeble, “Um, no, I haven’t…”

“Bullshit! We’re way past that. We know you have.”

At this point, the dude-perm starts waving his finger at me, “Every dollar you put in your pocket comes right out of my pocket!”

This, coming from the guy who’s currently wearing 80’s style athletic short shorts that not only didn’t have a pocket but weren’t exactly concealing much else.

I just blinked and stammered. I wasn’t being smart, or coy, or playing any sort of game. I couldn’t even think. Had I peed myself?

People are clever and clever people who think they can’t get caught get careless.

I made a couple of friends working at the burger and fry shack that summer. One of them was Derek. He was cool. A year older and already driving; longer hair; metalhead like me. I had no idea, of course, that this friendship would eventually land me in the security office shaking like a leaf.

A week or so before my call down to the office, Derek let me in on a little secret, although, as it turns out, it wasn’t really a secret. He was lifting money from the cash registers, and “it was a foolproof system.”

Not only was he doing it, but several people were. Someone else had shown him. And now he was going to show me.

We sold three things at our stand: burger (with or without cheese), fries, and soda. Each priced a nice round number like $1.00 or $3.00, plus we had a “meal deal” where you got all three for $5.00.

Most customers ordered either a single item or the meal. Almost no change and easy math.

“Gimme a fry. Here’s $2.” Or, “Gimme two meals with cheese. Here’s a $10.”

And since they’re not getting any change, they grab their grub, wheel around, and off they go. They’re not looking at you or their money. As the cashier, just peek behind you to ensure no manager is watching and hit the “no sale” button. The cash drawer pops out, but with some kindergarten sleight of hand, that $5 or $10 misses the drawer and lands in your front pocket, and the cash register and daily reconciliation are none-the-wiser.

The system was foolproof.

But here’s the thing about clever people, they really like to show others how clever they are. What good is it if you can’t take credit?

More people. Less foolproof.

Ever wonder why prices at fast food and other volume-based retail establishments are $2.95, $1.10, and $5.15, rather than $3.00, $1.00, and $5.00? Wouldn’t it just make sense to use round numbers to make it easy on both the customer and the cashier?

Teenagers. That’s why.

Near the end of my summer working as the fry guy at Dorney Park’s Wildwater Kingdom, the shift manager summoned me, “Get your ass to the security office.”

So I did. I had no idea why, but this wasn’t an altogether foreboding request. We got summoned to the security office for a variety of non-scary and non-security reasons — phone call from home, forgetting to sign your time card, a question about a lost and found item, etc. I had been there a handful of times myself. No big deal.

So I sure didn’t expect what was waiting for me inside that office.

I walked through the door and into a group of stern-faced adults that included the head of security (in CHiPS-style uniform complete with mirrored aviators), another security officer (also in uniform, but without the shades), the operations manager for all food services, and the big guy himself — the bodybuilding, 80’s athletic short shorts and string tanktop wearing, dude-permed owner of the park.

My heart sank, my anxiety shot to the moon, and I thought to myself, “Uh oh, I think I know what this is about.”

For just a second, I didn’t move. Nobody did. 

A silence dropped over the entire room for what seemed like an hour. I had no idea what had happened, but now I could smell burnt hair. 

I looked down at the hair on my arms — most of it gone, and what was left was curled up like Christmas ribbon. A coworker looked at me and said, “Dude, your eyebrows.”

My eyebrows were gone, and so too were my eyelashes. My bangs looked like the few remaining follicles on my arms. 

And that smell.

If you’ve ever worked a pilot light before, you know what happened. I pushed and held the gas valve knob, which momentarily shut off the gas flow to the pilot light and choked out the flame. But I failed to twist it so that it stayed off. So as I worked to clean the fry hopper, the pilot light gas trickled (luckily, only trickled) out and built up inside the cavity, just waiting for some dumbass kid like me to come along and present the flame. 

My father-in-law had a great saying, “It don’t pay to be dumb unless you show it.”

I got my money’s worth that day. 

The good news is that now, over 35 years later, I’m extra diligent around gas-fired appliances. Fool me once…And I’ll never forget that smell.

Oh, and this was 1985. Of course, I stayed and worked the rest of my shift.

Now get off my f*#!kin lawn.

In the summer of 1985, I was 15 and worked the inaugural season of Dorney Park’s Wildwater Kingdom. I learned a lot of life lessons in those short couple of months. 

I worked in the burger and fry joint stationed at the end of the wave pool. Get out of the wave pool, and exchange your soggy dollar bills for a refreshing drink, burger, and fries. Yeah, we got ketchup. 

I was the fry guy.

Actually, we all rotated through the various jobs, the fryer was one, but we also made burgers in a conveyer belt oven, slung drinks from the fountain, and took our turn at the window interacting with the public. 

But my favorite job was making fries — I didn’t have to interact with the wet and impatient public; it was a one-man job; and most importantly, I could nic a few fries here and there throughout my shift. 

Today was cleaning day. As the “fry guy,” my job was the fryer. My directions:

1. Turn off the pilot light
2. Drain the cool oil
3. Clean the hopper
4. Fill it with new oil
5. Relight the pilot light

I went at it with fervor. Steps 1 – 4 were complete; now time to fire it all back up.

I reached for the pilot light with the match, and “Phwooooof!”

I can still remember the smell of the first computer I saw and touched. It was a Radio Shack TRS-80 Model I. I was in fourth grade, and this was the library in Lower Milford Elementary school.

What is that smell? It’s caused by the out-gassing of blah, blah, blah…

It doesn’t matter what it is. Every time I smell it, it takes me back. Directly to that library in 4th grade. The engagement of nostalgia through my olfactory sense. Once I’m there, I can hear the keys’ click and feel their resistance under my fingers.

The first moment that set me on what was to be my professional path for over 30 years.

I remember the smell of the movie theater seats where my dad took me to see Star Wars in 1977 and the smell of the inside of a brand-new Dodge Omni. I remember the smell of the blanket we wrapped our oldest son in to bring him home from the hospital.

And I also remember the smell of the insides of many houses that I worked in doing mission work. I’m not sure what the ingredients are, but it’s the unmistakable smell of poverty. 

Every time I get a whiff of any of these out in the world, I’m immediately transported back to that moment. The story, or stories that surround those moments, make me who I am. 

What are the smells from your past that form the story of who you are?