16 years

16 years ago today, at 3.30pm, a tiny company that employed me for over 2 years was purchased by a large, rising, shooting star in its industry. A friend of mine remembered receiving the phone call from the limousine from our CFO telling her to go ahead and cut checks and pay bills; our accounts were now backed by the large corporation.

And then she and I stayed and ran a million dollar check run. Later on, we would run million dollar checks.

Before I left that company 4 and a half years later, it had been purchased again – the guppy had swallowed a whale. And my time was done, as I figured it would be, in my 30th year, and so off I went, riding off into the sunset as the system I supported was decommissioned.

Within 2 years of that, the guppy went bankrupt. And then the guppy went to jail. Within 4 more years, the company was acquired again. The brand name died, never to live again.

So today I touched base with my friend. She has stayed in the industry, even on the same street, doing her thing. I’ve changed industries 4 times, and job functions 10 times in that time span. We talked about how much of our personal history relates back to this one pivotal day. Today at lunch with my husband, we talked of this same day, and its relation to our history. June 30, 1995 was a day for the ages.