Recently, I received a surprise in the mail, a plaque from the TIA honoring Matchmaker Logistics for 35 years of membership. It shouldn’t have come as a surprise – I know my family started Matchmaker 35 years ago – I was there!
As I set the plaque on my desk, next to my cell phone, my keyboard, and my many computer monitors, I thought back to the early days when we conducted business old-school – with just a land line and a fax line.
In fact, the first fax machines and the first camcorders came on the market in Japan in 1980. Japan was on a roll – the country also took the lead as the world’s largest auto producer. The average cost of a new car was $7,200.00 and a gallon of gas was $1.19.
The Pac-Man arcade game and Post-It Notes both made their debuts. Popular films included Nine to Five, Raging Bull, and Coal Miner’s Daughter. On television, millions of viewers tuned into the TV soap opera Dallas to learn who shot lead character J.R. Ewing.
Of course, J.R. wasn’t the only one who got shot. Ronald Reagan was President of the United States and CNN had just become the first 24-hour news station, so his attempted assassination got plenty of coverage. Reagan handled the entire ordeal with his trademark sense of humor. Whether or not one subscribed to his politics, you had to admit, he was a pretty funny guy:
- “I hope you’re all Republicans.” -speaking to surgeons as he entered the operating room following the 1981 assassination attempt.
- “Honey, I forgot to duck.” -to his wife, Nancy, after surviving the assassination attempt.
- “I am not worried about the deficit. It is big enough to take care of itself.”
- “I have left orders to be awakened at any time in case of national emergency — even if I’m in a Cabinet meeting.”
- “Politics is supposed to be the second-oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first.”
- “Thomas Jefferson once said, ‘We should never judge a president by his age, only by his works.’ And ever since he told me that, I stopped worrying.”
Lead the way with your sense of humor this weekend,
~Bob
