First Kisses

They're life's most incredible moments. The first kiss of a relationship. Of course you know its going to happen before it does-you've probably been thinking about it for a while: that night, for the past week or even longer! You never know exactly how its going to go down, but you know that its going to happen. And you've wondered about it, you've tried to imagine what it will be like: what kind of kisser she'll be, if its going to be soft and gentle or passionate and forceful. But nothing can prepare you for that moment, that incredible moment when your eyes meet at the end of the night, and you both know, with every certainty, that its about to happen. All of the doubt or wondering about how the night is going or what she thinks of you vanishes when you lock eyes. And the electricity between you, the intense energy built up, is magnetic and it draws you, without any conscious effort of your own, toward each other. And the subconscious connection that allows you to turn your heads at just the right angle and lean in with just the right speed so that when your lips finally meet, all you have to think about is the soft pressure of her lips against yours and the rhythms of her breathing and of your beating heart.

Of course, you don't actually think about any of this when its happening. That's the beauty of the moment: you don't think about anything for those 2 or 3 or 4 seconds. Its just the two of you, connected physically, intimately. When its all over there is that brief silence, when all you can do is smile, and then you lick your lips, to moisten them after the kiss, and you're surprised to taste something completely new. It could be fruity, or sweet, or salty or some combination of those. It could be from the gum she's chewing, her lip gloss, that last drink at the bar, but regardless, it is the taste of that girl at that moment, and you will never taste it again after that night. You take a second, close your eyes and savor the new flavor, wishing you could save some of it for another day, another night. Then you open your eyes, see her standing there, and you realize the only choice you have is to enjoy it while you can. That's when you look into her eyes again, close yours and lean in for the next kiss, and do it all again.

Teamwork, Communication and Rotten Meat

Tonight my roommate and I, who have both taught, individually and together, numerous classes on teamwork and communication, learned a valuable lesson in both of those topics.

Monday night, Clif called asking me to pull out some chicken breast and hamburger meat to defrost so he could make dinner later that night. Being a good roommate, I put the chicken breast in the sink with some warm water and the hamburger patties in the microwave on a plate. Unfortunately, I didn't tell him where exactly I had put the hamburger. So when he didn't see it out with the chicken, he assumed I had forgotten to pull it and got some from the freezer. When I got home he was cooking up hamburger meat so, naturally, I assumed that he had found it.

The next night, we starting smelling a progressively terrible odor in the kitchen (and lately even in the living room). We thought it must have been the garbage disposal, since we didn't have perishable foods in any of the cabinets. Running the garbage disposal with soap didn't seem to help and the candles we lit only masked the odor. I finally became determined on Wednesday night to find the problem. I smelled my way around the kitchen, ruling out all of the cabinets, the sink, the refrigerator and even the stove, before I came to the microwave. When I opened it, what did I find but my conscientiously placed hamburger patties, which had by now thawed out...and begun molding quite extensively. The smell was truly putrid. When I managed to peel the rotting patties off the plate into the trash, the appearance and smell almost made throw up.

So what went wrong here and led to this most disgusting conclusion? It was a complete breakdown of apartment communication. We both made assumptions about the others' actions and because he never called me out on forgetting to grab the meat and I neither communicated to him my actions nor followed up with him, we both had different ideas of where the meat was, that is, neither of us thought it was in the microwave. Therefore, we didn't even think to check there when we started to smell something rotten.

The only good that came from this whole ordeal is a good real world example of the very rotten consequences when teams don't communicate properly. I'm sure we'll remember this story when we next teach one of those classes.