Accolades about Alliteration and Anniversaries

Accolades about Alliteration and Anniversaries

I was 30 years old and feeling pretty snug in my spot.  As the managing editor of a respected NYC trade journal, I spent hours and hours each week interviewing shipping executives.  Everything was as my title suggested … manageable, until one spring day, when my boss, Jon Jacobs, set me on the trail of my very first ever high tech (as we called it back then) assignment.

“Call Bill Bugbee at CSS in Oregon and find out what’s going on out there.”

“Oregon?  His name is what?” I asked in a mocking tone.

“His name is Bill Bugbee …”

How could I start a dialogue without bouncing all over those B’s — those bubbly B’s bursting boldly!  Hmmm … a  Northwesterner who had launched a very innovative start-up that was clearly airborne and who answered to a name that nodded to nature: yes, a bug and a bee.

“No,” I told JJ, “I’m not going to interview him” and skirted his stare by absentmindedly shuffling loose papers.

You call him,” I said sassily, minutes before I retreated to my cubicle and dialed the numbers, only to learn that their CEO was burrowing in Brussels, and so I was immediately passed on to a non-alliterative marketing director who filled my tank with glittery gibberish.

I called right back and left a message for B.B. to call Pamela Gilbert at Brandon’s Shipper and Forwarder,  Maybe a week passed before he returned my call,  justifiably jetlagged but blazingly brilliant about the art of transmitting tariffs.  But, wait, before he hung up, he sounded awfully anxious that I might somehow realign his words and dilute his message, so he twisted my arm till I agreed to read-backs.

Granting read-backs involved reciting all the quotes I’d extracted from our chipper chat, to convince him that I couldn’t possibly misconstrue his quest. Nobody had ever before demanded read-backs from me. Nobody but Bill Bugbee. My assurances that I’d never misquoted any of my interviewees made little difference to him.

By the time the ink was dry, Bill was very happy, and on his next trip to the World Trade Center, he invited me to have a drink with him. July 22, 1983 — the anniversary of when we first locked eyes.

Six weeks later,  I agreed to be his wife — under the shade of a weeping willow … two bugs and bees.

 

 

 

 

Leave a Reply