Important People

So today, after a sweet, sweet mid-morning Power Nap I took off to do six easy miles. Immediately after my first mile I was greeted with mutiple police baracades - everything was completely shut-off. "No problem," I thought, I will just go around a few blocks and rejoin my usual running path there. No luck, that was barracaded off too. What the heck? What is going on ? No more than 2 minutes after I realized that my options of continuuing this run were severely limited as I saw the Presidential motorcade cruise by. I was pretty impressed - there were very official looking cars all flying the French flag, too many motorcycles patroling the area to be counted, a helicopter flying overhead, and police vans with all of the doors swung open with SWAT teams (or the French equivalent) ready to jump out at a moment's notice. So after the Motorcade delay I was finally able to continue my run as follows:

7:26/7:22/7:24/7:24/7:17/7:55* min/mile
* There is absolutely NO way that this mile was this slow. I was finishing my run to the soothing melodies of Ricky Martin - I do NOT run this slow when I got Ricky backin' me up!

But after my delay with the motorcade it got me thinking about how the "rules change" for the "important people" in our society. The entire Champs d'Alysee was closed for the President's motorcade and traffic was completely backed up in all directions. (The traffic circle in the picture above was completely closed...and this is a VERY busy intersection!) Everyone patiently waited for the President to get to whereever it was that he was going. You have to be pretty important for people to happily accept this inconvenience for you (Imagine if you could get the same treatment on I-10 during rush-hour on your way to work?!!)

Just this past week a co-worker of mine got the "priviledge" of having lunch with a VERY senior person in our company. He told me that before he (and others) were to join the VIP for lunch, that they all had to show up early to be briefed by his secretary as to how to talk to him. They were told topics of things that he enjoys talking about, topics of things to avoid, and were informed of other generalaties that they were to keep in mind over lunch. You really have to be important for people to be briefed before they get to hang-out with you.

In my previous company, the CEO lived in another city but came to visit our office about once a year. Before he came the carpets were replaced, the walls were re-painted and we all had to clean our offices "in case" he might decide to pass through our hallway. In fact, some corridors were made nicer than others (i.e. the "best" paintings were rehung there) because they would plan exactly where he would walk through the building.

So at what point in time does an average Joe become this important (because everyone was an average joe at some point)? The day you realize that everyone is always 20minutes late meeting you is when you have to ask yourself - do I just have tardy friends or is my secretary debriefing them?

This leads me to my next point - I am returning to Houston in July for 2 weekends. I have two awesome buddies that immediately offered for me to stay at their place for both weekends while I was home. It is great to have such quality friends and people in my life but how do I decide whose place to stay at? Well, I need to find out who thinks our friendship is most important! So JD and Scotty, I need to know if either one of you is planning on doing any of the following for my arrival:
1. Repainting
2. Barracading your block to traffic so I will not be bothered with traffic noise while sleeping
3. Arranging a police escort so I do not have to deal with Houston traffic
4. Debrief your neighbours so that I will be entertained with idle chit-chat when walking about

My decision is based on your answers! So, I suggest you make some trip to Lowe's and start getting your places ready for my arrival!! Ok, just kidding - all I ask is that we hit Panera Bread after our weekend runs!