For Better or Worse

There are these moments. The ones where your brain does pretty startling things. Making connections. Sparking at just the right moment.

My team at work was having a meeting the other day, and it started out with some lighthearted talk about how I'm going to buy a cow in Bangladesh soon. (More on that later.) Anyway, one of the people on our team mentioned that she'd bought a cow as an investment as a kid, and the cow was named Blacky. She lived on a cattle ranch, so those cows weren't long for the world, and I mentioned that it would be hard for me to name my cow if it was soon to be sent off to the slaughter.

There were a number of other conversations that transpired. About e-mail marketing. About the state of the economy. About work stuff.

Toward the end of the meeting, we were given some bad news. One of the members of our team (not in attendance) was being let go. Kind of sad, but the change made sense in the context of some other changes going on with our company. The guy in question is kind of our team mascot. Quiet. Just a nice guy.

Anyway, within three seconds of having that news imparted, my brain kind of started juggling the news, the previous conversations and a million other things, and I turned to my co-worker (the one who lived on the ranch) and I said, "That's why you never name the cow."

Now, I have to say, there was a moment of silence after everyone heard that. Just a beat. A moment where the reaction could have gone either way. It might have taken a moment to register. Or maybe everyone was deciding if it was insensitive or not. But after that beat, there was just the loudest, most enthusiastic laughter in recent memory.

Maybe it was because the comment was a moment of levity in an otherwise tense discussion. But I'd rather think of it as appreciation for how my brain works sometimes. For better or worse.