Brushes with fame and fortune

As I painted my kitchen today I had time to think about how things could have turned out differently.  Butterfly effect thoughts of "what if".  
 

My life has had some interesting moments and I wonder if everyone ponders theirs when there aren't enough distractions.

-----My mom went on a few dates back when she was freshly divorced and I was 12 or so.  Apparently an elderly hotel magnate took a liking and offered her a hotel for an "evening".  She refused (good for her) but now we aren't a part of the Marriott chain.

------My step cousin was a bit of a dork but the rest of the cousins and I took him along on our adventures in our early teen years.  I joined the army and he went to Brown and then Harvard.  He now earns 100 mill a year.  And I'm a federal employee making ends meet, barely.

-----Before reality tv was big I was a semi-finalist for the first season of survivor.  Maybe if I'd answered a question differently I'd have been there getting my 15 minutes of fame.

There have been others but those sprang to mind.  How about you?  Any brushes with the glittering life?

I saw Tony Mandarich walking through the mall when I was a kid. 

I went to high school with Alanis Morissette. Backed her up once or twice, actually. 

I also used to work directly for/beside Jiwei Wang at a company called Saraide. After we went in different directions, he came up with a little doodad called the Instant Pot. You may have heard of it.

The Waring appliance guy used to be married to my great grandma but left when she was pregnant or something like that, so now i'm not in charge of a multi million dollar E36 M3ty appliance company 

RossD said:

I saw Tony Mandarich walking through the mall when I was a kid. 

Oh yeah.  I knocked Marcus Camby down once in 1994.  

Saw Conrad Bain in the airport one time.  Got Carroll Shelby’s autograph at the Detroit Grand Prix.   I’m alright where I am.  

Me and some guy named Bob, about 25 years ago.

Having been a bartender at swanky spots in L.A., I feel like I've met them all.  Most of them I had to kick out of my bar.

Except Gwen Stefani.  Simultaneously super confident and always completely "I don't give a E36 M3 about your opinion" but also classy and never crossed the line.  The kind of lady you don't take home to mother, but then you say "heck, deal with it mom, she's worth it."  One part Clara Oswald and three parts Tank Girl.

She made specific advances one night, but she had been partying pretty hard and I (forever the gentleman) declined to pursue.  Had the cards been dealt differently, I could be Blake Shelton right now.

I don't sleep with drunk women.  Period.  I don't care how hot or famous they are.

I got Back Yates signature at his book signing. He said I needed better goals.

Tried out for MTV's "Fast Enough". Was told my driving skills were " too advanced"  they didn't want a ringer, plus too old. I was 27 and they wanted 18-25. Don't know if the show ever aired.

In high school, I was forced to take a class in something called BASIC. It was a lot of work to make something called a "computer" display something on a tv screen. It was useless and stupid, as stupid as the typing class I was forced to take. Knowing that typing and computers would never be of any use to me, I was happy when I was able to take metal shop and wood shop.

I could have made an amazing career in computers, and a decent living working with metal or wood. I did neither.

My dad was able to get me the main Chicago contact into the Sprinkler Fitters union back in 1980 - hard to get in to at the time. 
 

I passed and went to community college then a local university to get a business degree. I'd be retired by now.  

Had I quit college as a freshman, I realistically could have become an NHL referee. Very small chance, but a realistic one IF I had made it my life. 

So this is a name drop thread? I used to work in talk radio, so I've had a few more chances...

• The radio program I was a (very small) part of was syndicated to over 50 stations in 7 states with several million listeners.
• I've caught a football from both Bart Starr and Brett Favre
• A friend and former radio slave went into stand-up and ended up doing some stuff for Jay Leno. Wasn't enough of a connection to get me into Jay's garage when I was in Burbank
• I went out for my birthday (bad decision on a work trip) and stumbled back into the midtown Four Seasons in Atlanta crashing into Big Boi from OutKast. 
• Also at the Four Seasons, met Shaq and the Miami Heat, and the guys from Rascal Flats if you are into that sort of music. 
• Roger Penske walked across the pit lane to shake my hand before a race. He was busy and saw that I recognized him but wasn't going to interrupt, so he came to me. 
• I was in DC on another work trip, I was up early and about to go into the conference when I noticed that Coach K was doing a book signing and meet. I was 3rd in line and he spent a few minutes chatting with me before signing his book. Nice and engaging guy.  Disclaimer: I'm a UNC fan. 
• Walking through the paddock before the 2003-4 Petit LeMans, a guy crossed my path. It took a second to register and I finally said "Tiff". He was stunned that an American noticed him. 
• I know a good number of very wealthy business people and investors, but they are more work than famous. 

Those are a few highlights. 

In reply to BradLTL :

i'm not pulling the name drop thing, got too many.

My parents divorced, mom tried to hang on to the three kids. I'm the middle, with an older sister, younger brother.

She took off to visit her parents for the summer, then sent my dad a letter and said she wasn't coming home.

She couldn't legally keep us, since our legal domicile was Florida, but in 1960 it was pretty hard for a father to get custody. My dad's lawyer said, "If it was me, I'd go get my kids."

That's what happened. It's outside of the scope of this discussion, so I'll leave out the details about escaping from North Carolina, the perjury with subsequent arrest warrants, the FBI, the North Carolina State Police, and the Florida governor declining to extradite.

My sister ended up staying with our mother, who married rich. Private jet rich. My dad raised my brother and I on an artist's income.

I am so, so lucky. My mother had already tried to kill me at age four (she was bat E36 M3 crazy), so I'm not sure I would have survived, and my sister is seriously messed up.

So today, I'd either be rich, or dead.

Patrick said:

In reply to BradLTL :

i'm not pulling the name drop thing, got too many

I don't think it's a name drop thread as in "I sat next to Tom Selleck on an airplane once."

I think it's more of a "I went to high school with Bill Gates and he wanted me to join the Computer Club with him but I called him a nerd and pantsed him instead" kind of thread. 
 

I never had much interest in fame, but fortune has some appeal to me.

We had $37,000 saved up and wanted to buy some stocks at the depths of the financial meltdown. I picked HBAN which was at about $1. My wife and I had a heart to heart and she wanted a different house instead. We picked the house. Today that would be $705k with dividends reinvested. That's OK - it actually might have been worse for me as it would have convinced me I was a stock picking genius and I would have gone broke trying to chase that high.

I had an option to buy a warehouse in a rundown area near a nice suburb of Columbus at $300k. I decided it was just too risky financially and I wasn't sure my business partner was going to work out. The warehouse sold to Giant Eagle recently for $1.3M as part of an amassing of parcels to build a new store. News flash, though: my business partner didn't work out, so who knows how that would have fallen out.

I bid on a house at auction to fix up and live in. We had $427k in financing lined up and it went for $429k. A few years later the new owners had split the lot, had a new house built, sold the new house for $750k, fixed up the old house, and sold it for $675k.

There are more, of course. In the end I've done OK but had a few bits turned differently we'd be swimming in it.

I sold several hundreds of dollars worth of model trains to Rick Mears, ~30 years ago. I worked at a hobby store in the Milwaukee area, and the Indy drivers would frequent the store when they were in town for the race at The Mile. Arie Luyendyk would occasionally drop in, too, as he lived in the area. 

I've told this in a similar thread,

Way too literal minded at one in the morning.   I thought someone bought Bob Ross's used brushes on eBay or something.

In reply to BradLTL :

was the Favre one an interception?  ba-dum. 

Since I was a kid, my dream was to drive a monster truck. It was all I wanted to do. And when I was 20, I was able to answer a help wanted ad (on a message board no less) and take the gig.

Nothing major, a team most of you have probably never heard of running at tiny arenas in smaller towns. This wasn't Monster Jam. But I was happy. I was getting to eat, sleep and breathe monster trucks.

For all of 6 weeks.

I had pretty low self esteem and I had a girlfriend that pretty much controlled what I did. She told me to come home, and I did. I spent the next seven years of my life with her. We separated in 2015 and the divorce was final almost two years later. During a fight while our poor excuse for a marriage was falling apart, she told me she got pregnant with our first on purpose so I wouldn't leave her again.

I used to think about where I would be had I stuck with it. One of the bigger teams, even on TV perhaps.

I'm really happy with my life now. Wife 2.0 is so awesome, and we get along great. I've got a good job, a decent home and stability.

Moral of the story. Don't stick your hootus in crazy.

I was in a band once. Not worth it. 

Duke said:

Patrick said:

In reply to BradLTL :

i'm not pulling the name drop thing, got too many

I don't think it's a name drop thread as in "I sat next to Tom Selleck on an airplane once."

I think it's more of a "I went to high school with Bill Gates and he wanted me to join the Computer Club with him but I called him a nerd and pantsed him instead" kind of thread. 
 

Gotcha... Please ignore previous name dropping. 

I suppose my radio career could have turned into something, I had a lot of connections. But I decided I wanted to get paid instead and went into FinTech. It's worked out pretty well and enabled me to travel to a lot of places around the globe. 

My mother and her  husband won the lottery. It was just a few months before 9/11. They weren't great with money, and you have never seen so much turn into so little so fast. 

I finished 2nd in the Optima Ride Shotgun contest... Still bitter about that. Not sure if it counts as fame though. 

I've had a few: Met a bass player in an oldies revival band that was looking for a sax player who could do some vocals. I passed on the deal. Some years later I saw the group on tv, Sha Na Na!

Speaking of monster trucks, I sold a trailer to a fellow who told me about this new thing he built. Turns out it was the original Bigfoot.

When I was in the Marine Band my section leader was from California and told me his father and uncle worked as studio musicians. He offered to help me re-locate out there when I got out. Turns out the father and uncle were named Sherman and the studio was Disney. They did the music for Mary Poppins and other films.