Girlfriends, Guitars and Karma

I left a secure job with Texas Oil & Gas years ago to start my own company, soon learning that running your own business was tough. I persevered and managed to learn a few things along the way,

I had less than a thousand dollars saved when I decided to vacate a secure job in lieu of starting a new company. Times were tough and I ended up borrowing a thousand dollars from my girlfriend and mortgaging my motorcycle for a thousand dollars. Six months passed without having earned a single penny and I was starting to become desperate.

My girlfriend Carol knew that I had talent. I had often thought that I was the world’s greatest oil finder. Of course, I have many other delusions as well. We had gone to a movie at Shepard Mall (the first mall in Oklahoma) and were passing a music store.

Carol and I stopped, gazing in at the most beautiful guitar that I had ever seen. It was a maroon-colored Guild and I knew the moment I saw it that I could not live another day without it. I bought it about ten minutes later with the last few dollars of credit remaining on my last credit card.

“You are an idiot,” Carol told me. “You haven’t made a penny in six months and you are wasting money on things you don’t need.”

“I’m making a statement,” I argued. “I’m demonstrating that I think my financial situation is temporary and showing my resolve that things will soon turn around.”

Carol left me shortly after I bought the guitar but I was soon able to repay what I owed her because I made almost four-hundred-thousand dollars the second six months that I was an independent.

Many years later, back in 2003, my business was also failing. Remembering the crimson Guild, I talked myself into buying an electric guitar on eBay that I could ill afford. Amazingly, business turned around almost overnight, shortly after it arrived.

Times are tough. The stock market has crashed, along with the price of oil and gas. Like almost everyone else in the country, I feel as if someone has nailed me square in the gut with a steel pipe. I know what I intend to do about it. When I sign off on this post, I am going to log on to eBay and buy a twelve-string Martin. Wish me luck because if this works, I will take everyone along with me.

Fiction South