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Dear Daughter

Sorry this post is a little long!

Sometimes doing the right thing is a little embarrassing, but it makes Life Great. A short story here – remember Birdo (you named it, not me)? The baby bird our darn cat brought home for us as a gift? He was tiny and so fragile at first. I had read that to raise it, the bird needed to be fed about every 20 minutes and should not go an hour without being fed. A couple days after Birdo joined our family, I had an important real estate meeting and would be gone for hours. I took Birdo in the car with me, parked under a nice shady tree, and fed him plenty just before going inside the people’s home. As we spoke about selling their home, I began to peak at my watch as 20 minutes passed, then 30, and finally at 40 minutes I had to speak up.

I told these folks, that I was a little embarrassed, “here I’m trying to get your business to sell your Palo Alto home and I’m looking at my watch.” I told them about our cat bringing us Birdo, how I had him in the car, and how important the little guy was too me and he needed to be fed. They laughed and thought that was the greatest thing and demanded I bring Birdo inside and feed him in front on them.

So I got Birdo from the car and all one ounce of him was very angry at me – so tiny and so loud with a huge mouth! Reminds me of somebody…hmmmm? anyway, these clients loved it as I sat there in my business attire feeding this little loud mouth – remember this was the bird not your brother.  Anyway, I got to sell their home and they always asked me about Birdo.  The truth is that looking back, I could have lived with losing that deal, but I could not have lived with myself had I let Birdo starve in the car. Of course when he got bigger he would just land on my should and bite my earlobe – that was one crazy ingrate of a bird! But the moral of the story is that Life is Great because even embarrassing situations can lead to good things when you are trying to do what’s right.  Of course Ned Stark in Game of Thrones was trying to do the right thing and that turned out bad? Well, do the right thing anyway unless you’re living in some medieval fantasy land.

Dad