by Nick Jacobs

It's amazing to me how much and yet how very little has changed during the past ten years. The subtleness of the metamorphosis is similar to the 212th degree, the point at which water goes from hot to boiling. First, you're hot, and then you're cooked.

Today I put on a new suit. It was the same size, same cut, same style and same manufacturer, but today, I looked like a watermelon in a silk stocking. That extra pound must have been the tipping point. After 20 years, the 42 Regular was not happening. If the coat button had launched and become airborne, it could have killed someone.

Another thing happened today that was totally my fault. My words took the moment to a boil.

Many of you have read about my periodic consternation relating to scientists and the world of science. Sometimes, just sometimes, as they apply science to living, the participants view of life becomes a little skewed. Sometimes the brilliant scientists think about things too long, or they get into too much analytical detail, but the characteristic that is the most worrisome to me is that they come from a world where normalcy involved feeding, holding, loving and talking to bunnies for months, and then cutting them open to see what impact the experiment had on their arteries.

It was because of this trait that I decided to hire some hard working, fun loving, spirited, people to liven the place up a little. So, a few years ago, four terrific people joined us to bring additional life, spirit, fun, and spontaneity to the institute.

At 3:55 this afternoon, I was running out of the door on my way to a doc meeting in the hospital when I noticed something for the third time that week, new paper signs. No one could ever fully appreciate my hatred for paper signs unless they had spent the past twenty years living inside of my suits. You see, I had a boss who scoured the eight floors of the hospital building where I had worked to find these paper things, and then, rather than take them down, he just screamed at me. You see, paper signs represented transience, instability, poverty and unsupervised spontaneity to him and now to me. These signs in question had been breeding over the past few weeks, like the flimsy metal hangers that the laundry gives you. You start out with two, and by the end of the week you have a laundry bag full.

So, as I left the building, I turned to one of my happy souls and said, "What the heck are these signs doing here?" Unfortunately, she took it personally. She had been asked to help make the signs, and, as an artist, she took pride in her work. It was as if I had screamed, "Hey, your kid is ugly!" As Joe Lieberman would say, "Bipartisanship means never having to say you're sorry." Why couldn't I just have said, "Let's get some permanent signs?" Maybe it would have been better to have said, "This sign is so beautiful that we should get it memorialized by having it bronzed?"

Anyway, I was later informed that I had upset my friend very much. Running out the door with three other people who observed my despicable remark probably didn't help.

So, I'm dedicating this blog to all of those people who have been hurt by my curt, CEO, verbal shots. In Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, he writes, "Life is full of sadness. The best years of life are short. Events are cruel. And other people are cruel. In such a world, it is your DUTY to find and cherish whatever real happiness you can."

So, Cathy, and all the Cathy's I've boiled, I'm sorry. It wasn't personal. It's just that those paper signs are killin' me.