Earrings near me
I thought about the poor guy who might be looking for his jacket, but the train was almost ready to take off again. I wedged a colleagues I was traveling with between the now-closing train doors and yelled, “Don’t move.” Surprisingly, he actually listened to me. I made my way back to the bin in record time, put the other jacket back in, and got mine out. No one was the wiser. And yes, we were almost late for the meeting because of me. That would have been an epic disaster.
The one thing I seem to always forget to pack is cuff links. Most of my dress shirts require them, but I convinced myself that forgetting cuff links is an easy oversight since I rarely travel in a dress shirt. Here’s a travel tip: It’s tough to buy cuff links after midnight.
Photo
Nick Ragone, a partner at Ketchum Communications and a historian, at the Grand Canyon.
Credit
Frank Ragone
I was headed to Texas for an important business meeting when I realized midflight that I had again forgotten my cuff links. I told a colleague who I was traveling with and he reassured me that we could buy a pair when we landed.
We touched down around midnight and, not surprisingly, there were few stores open at that time. We asked our driver for some suggestions as to where I could buy some cuff links. He laughed at us, but took us to the nearest Walmart. The greeter there laughed at us, too, when we pulled up in a Town Car and then asked for the cuff links aisle. He suggested we go to the women’s jewelry aisle, and was probably thinking we should be men and make do.
Little did the greeter know that my colleague is like MacGyver. He found a pair of tasteful earrings, and then we went to the tool aisle and got a pair of mini-pliers. The next morning, he worked his magic and somehow manipulated the earrings onto my shirt.
I was relieved, because the chief executive I was meeting with was always well dressed. Without the cuff links, my shirt cuffs would have been flapping in the breeze. I would have resembled a pirate, but not in a Johnny Depp, Capt. Jack Sparrow cool way. More like the Seinfeld puffy shirt way.
I was feeling really good that the earrings held up during the entire meeting. But when I went to shake hands to say goodbye, one of them exploded out of my cuff and fell to the floor. It was clear that it was a woman’s earring. The chief executive looked a little baffled. Right then, I realized that looking like a pirate may not have been all that bad.
