Tomorrow I go in for my surgery.  I’ve been listening to the Les Miserables sound track all day today.  It’s been a good distraction, nothing like some cathartic crying.  Every time I listen to the battle song, it reminds me of my Executive Management program at USC in Newport Beach California.

I’ve been retired from banking way longer than I ever worked.  My life the past twenty years has been about church, volunteering, golf, working out, travel, Rick.  But before that it was all about work.  A couple of years ago I helped out in the local Young Life office.  I was complaining to my friend Kim about something the youngsters were having me do and she said, “do they know who you are.” That made me laugh.  If I ever was somebody, it was a very long time ago.  I can assure you, it made no difference to my Young Life boss, Mike, who had asked me to photo copy the Lamar High School year book. 

Once upon a time, I was a promising young banker at the Bank of Montreal. I was on the fast track, on my way up.  I had already done a stint in London and was being prepped to take over the Houston office.  Each year BMO sent one of its up and comers to the University of Southern California Executive Management Program.  I was fortunate enough to go in 1995.  There were about 30 people from all over the world in my class.  There were five or six AT&T people, several naval officers, one US Congressman, a guy from South Africa, a guy from the Philippines, a lady from China, some other people I don’t remember, and me.

In a lot of ways it was your typical corporate training program.  We had fabulous speakers, case studies and the required bonding/group dynamic exercise. I’ve done lots of these types of things and this one was unique.  We were divided into three groups and each group had to sing and choreograph the battle song from Les Miserable. Believe me, I would rather have done a ropes course. Fortunately, my team had the Filipino (they love karaoke) and we had a secret weapon: the US Congressman, who was no other than Gopher from The Love Boat, Fred Gandy.  Those Hollywood types are so multi talented. The hardest part for me was memorizing the lyrics in the allotted time.  We came up with some lame dance moves and I lip synced the song while everyone else sang. It was nerve wracking and exhilarating at the same time. Somewhere in my closet I have a VHS tape of the performance. Can you hear the people sing…….