Okay, I'll bite. Here's something that has been on my mind for the past couple of days since it was announced that the U.S. is gearing up its war machine to go to war with Iran. During a business meeting a few months ago, a guy opined that I and others working on pursuing business in the Middle East should be very careful to hide the fact that we are women, because middle eastern men don't like to deal with women and if they knew that we are in positions of authority, "it would just kill them." What I wanted to say ever since then is that when I went to college in the Midwest, my university was very popular place for Middle Eastern men to go to study engineering. Over half of the engineering school was men from the middle east. I had several boyfriends from Iran, or as they called it then, Persia.
One of them was named Muhammed (like zillions of others) and went by the name Mark. He was my latest flame. When I was at home for spring break, I had to give him a call. I went to a pay phone, couldn't call him from home. I had to keep feeding change into the phone while his dorm mates went looking for him and finally he came to the phone. "Mark, I'm pregnant," I said bluntly. We agreed that we would get together as soon as I got back to campus and figure out what to do about it. However, being young, I did not realize that I was not pregnant, just late. So I was looking forward to telling him the happy news as soon as I returned. But when I got back to campus, he was nowhere to be found! Neither him nor his buddies! Anyway, he and his buddies are in power in Iran right now, and I know them better than their wives do! Imagine the reaction if I told this story to the manager with all the opinions. I could actually be a secret weapon in a war with Iran. I would know things about those boys that would be capital offenses, punishable by death. Seriously, I wouldn't be interested in exposing anyone's youthful trespasses, it's just ironic. So this certainly is a random thing, but sorry it's not very concise!