Accidents

In March 1968, I had just moved to New York City and was looking for a job.  I was quickly offered two similar positions, entry level accounting.  Reynolds Metals offered me $7,500 per year.  On the other hand, the CBS News Division bettered that by $500.  So, off I was going to CBS News.

However, my employment agency had scheduled an interview with Seagram's, which was also looking for an entry level accountant.  I was getting very tired of these interviews and was eager to start working and earn money.  At about 5 PM on the eve of the Seagram interview, I decided that I had had enough and called to cancel the interview.  I recall using a nearby pay phone.  

The Seagram interviewer's secretary answered and told me he (Tom Hawe) had just left for the day.  As such, to be polite, I decided to go ahead with the interview first thing the following morning.  It turned out Seagram's offer was $500 per year more than CBS News, so I accepted it.  I stayed with Seagram for more than 31 years and met many people (including my good friend Joe Giordano) and had many experiences (such as a business trip to Brazil).

What if Tom Hawe was still there that day when I called to cancel?  I would have gone to CBS News and met different people and had different experiences.  The fact that he had just left when I called is what I consider to be an accident.  I believe life contains a series of accidents which affect us.

Speaking of Brazil, one day in 1998, while at Seagram's, I was flipping through the pages of The Village Voice, a newspaper I never looked at...until that day (nor since).  In the classified section, I found an ad for private Portuguese classes given by a Brazilian woman, Natalia Gedanke.  With virtually nothing to lose, I gave it a shot.  The weekly classes lasted for five years and are a contributing factor as to why I am in Brazil today.  Finding that ad was an accident.    

When I was applying to college in 1962, I made the University of Pennsylvania my first choice.  It was what I wanted, a large university in a big city, a change from small town Oswego.  One reason I chose Penn was my older brother Paul had gone there six years before.  

When Paul was looking at colleges, he seriously considered the United States Military Academy at West Point, NY.  He satisfied all their requirements, academic and physical, with one exception, his eyesight.  

Paul was born two months premature and was placed in an incubator with a high level of oxygen.  This is the most likely explanation for his poor eyesight.  Many years ago, I remember being told (by whom I don't remember) the alleged reason Paul was born premature: our mother fell off a chair she was standing on.

As a result of his poor eyesight, West Point could not consider Paul for admission.  He thus went to Penn, where I followed later.  What if Paul had not been born premature, had had good eyesight and had decided to go to West Point?  Penn would then not have been on my radar and there would have been an excellent chance I would have gone elsewhere (only not West Point).  Was this an accident that altered the course of my life?

In the spring of 1966 while at Penn, I contracted the chronic illness ulcerative colitis.  There is no definitive reason why I got this disease, but many in the field believe it is caused by stress.  College was one of the most stressful periods of my life.  Perhaps if I had not gone to Penn, but to a less stressful university, I would not have gotten colitis.  

Because of colitis, I was disqualified from the United States Air Force Officer Candidate School which I was scheduled to begin July 5, 1967.  Without colitis I would have spent the next four years in the military.  How would that experience have affected me?  Where would I have gone next?  Was my colitis an accident which altered the course of my life?

My brother Ted matriculated as a freshman at Northeastern University in Boston, MA in September 1960.  Before the end of the year, he dropped out.  Ted then studied for one semester at the college in Oswego before transferring to Michigan State University in East Lansing, MI in 1961.  

There Ted met his future first wife, Joy Moss, whose best friend's sister, Bonnie Sobol, became my first wife.  If he had stayed at Northeastern, I never would have met her.  I might have gone to Brandeis University near Boston and met someone else.  Another accident that altered the course of my life?

My father, Harry Lasky, as a young man, accepted a job with the Netherland Dairy in Syracuse, moving from his home town of Troy, NY.  In 1925, he was transferred to its other dairy location in Oswego, where he met my mother.  They married in 1930 and I was born fifteen years later.  

If my father had never left Troy, I would not exist.  The same could be said if either of my grandfathers, Joseph Laskey or Julius Karchevsky, had not emigrated from eastern Europe to the United States around the turn of the Twentieth Century.

See what I mean about accidents affecting the course of my life, all our lives?