Ok, the Joke’s on Me!

On the island of St. Croix, USVI—my native homeland—we have a saying that goes: “Hurry dog eat raw corn.” In phonetically written, local-dialect form, the saying would look (and sound) something like this: Huh-ree dawg eat rawh kahn. It simply means: those who make hasty and poorly-thoughtout decisions will reap the fruitless, sometimes harsh, repercussions thereof.

So, in the spirit of “Hurry dog eat raw corn,” this week, I wanted to highlight a few bloopers I’ve made as an editor for this fine publication over the years. Sometimes, it’s good to laugh at ourselves—actually, it’s often good to do so.

1. Hurry dog: At my very first Las Vegas PPAI Expo in 2003, I thought I could visit every single booth; talk to every single person stationed at said booths; collect every single supplier catalog; and take every single giveaway that was offered to me. To boot, I wore three-inch heels (I was told to dress professionally) the whole time I was dutifully attempting to accomplish these feats.

Eat Raw Corn: Some of you already know the repercussions of this poorly-thoughtout decision (you may have attempted do as I did). If you don’t know, here’s a hint: Every part of my body experienced the full meaning of a nasty little word that begins with ‘P’ and rhymes with, let’s see, ‘Insane!’

2. Hurry Dog: Some years ago, I had a brilliant idea to write a three-part series on PPAI’s international arm, consisting of the promotional products’ associations of Canada, the UK, Mexico, Australia/New Zealand and Europe. Well, being that English, and English alone, is my first and second and third (you get the point) language, one would think a responsible journalist would enlist the help of a Spanish-speaking colleague to assist with contacting the, let’s say, Asociación Mexicana de Profesionales de la Promoción ... whose obvious language of origin would be Spanish ...