A NOTE ON SECOND CHANCES & BON JOVI!

Ritchie Sambora & Jon Bon Jovi

Hardly a day passes when I don't hear a song in my head. In recent days, it's been Bon Jovi's "Whole Lot of Leavin" from their "Lost Highway" CD. In my apartment complex here in Arizona, there are two sad posters up in the workout facility with the headine, "Missing Cat". So where is all this going?

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Well, about two months ago at work, someone had unintentionally left behind their college degree on a table. It was placed into the "Lost & Found" box. Then last Wednesday, I found it in the trash. I felt bad that someone's hard-earned degree wound up disposed like that, so I retrieved it and used telephone Directory Assistance to see if I could locate the girl's name listed on the degree. No luck. She wasn't in Phoenix, in Scottsdale, in Mesa, in Tempe, in Chandler---she just wasn't listed anywhere! But seeing the degree in the trash made me remember. Not all that long ago, I was working full time in broadcast management by day and driving off after work for the next few years to three night schools in Texas where I cobbled together the remaining courses I needed to graduate. I was racing to finish before losing my Dad to Parkinson's disease back home. As I've covered in my past Blogs on the subject of my Dad, we realized our dream and he did live to attend my Cap & Gown graduation ceremony in 1999. With those happy memories annealed in my consciousness, I went online to locate and telephone the student's college listed on the degree. It took me two phone transfers, but I finally reached the Office of the Dean and they did a search for her name. It turns out she was still at the school working now on her MBA! So, I told a secretary to pass along my name with the message that I found the missing degree. Last Friday morning, a girl showed up at work and asked to see me. It was the student! I handed her the lost degree. She was so grateful. I listened to her tell me how important it was for her to be reunited with the degree and I just winked and told her I understood.

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It's important to be reunited with what we need in life. This is the subtext of the new Richard Gere and Diane Lane movie, "Nights in Rodanthe" that I saw last night at the movies after PT, and felt it was nicely done. It's all about having second chances in life. In that spirit, I hope the "Missing Cat" posters I saw over the weekend lead to pet owners who are reunited with their Cats, just as the young girl working on her MBA feels today reunited with her B.A. degree. Even if--as Jon Bon Jovi sings: "There's a whole lot of leavin' going on".