When it Comes to Handling Life, Attitude is Everything
Aug 24, 2006 By
It's not fall yet and the students are back in school. Get up early, make breakfast, pack the lunches, skid out of the driveway, race to beat the bell, etc. Oops - attitude adjustment needed.
Our children are preparing themselves for life and developing their thinking brains. Support them wholeheartedly so you can enjoy an empty nest later on. There, that's better.
It seems the theme of my week last week was "attitude is everything" with everyone I met. Vivian Lin, president of Tangent Entertainment, was up from her headquarters in San Diego serving on a guest panel of speakers for Silicon Valley's Digital Hollywood Conference. Vivi, as her friends call her, was also visiting her mother Susan Lin of Gilroy (Susan's story of winning the Kaiser Permanente Thrive Award appeared in The Gilroy Dispatch's Lifestyles section May 2). She spoke with me about her projects with young people and some of the challenges she faces working with them.
A great many of the interns in her company are hardworking and creative, but the occasional individual with a bad attitude does crop up.
"I had one young intern that didn't want to work up through the ranks of a production team," Vivi said. "He wanted to go right to the highest levels without the experience. He started to have a very bad attitude, so I no longer wanted to work with him."
This shows the price of a poor attitude - no opportunities for growth and learning.
Take the attitude of Samuel L. Jackson in the new movie "Snakes on a Plane," which opened last Thursday night at our local cinemas. Jackson's character finally makes it a point to make a plan and carry out his plan - even if it means crawling through a cargo hold full of "snakes on crack."
If you did not attend the premiere along with myself, Ramune Ambrozaitis (whose idea it was to stay up past my bedtime), and the rest of the 20-somethings in the audience, you are deprived. Jackson had attitude.
The rest of us jumped and laughed our way through the bizarre flick ("kitschy" is how Ramune put it). Billy Wong, a South County resident and film student at the Rochester Institute of Technology, attended the opening with a fellow film student. I could not get a thumbs up or thumbs down from either of them.
Thumbs up from the mothers in the area who had time to enjoy a coffee after dutifully dropping off their kidlings at school and hightailin' it to the coffee klatch. I caught Christine Jenkins and Lara Petterson on dueling cell phones while Marlene Mooni sat back and read the paper in the morning sun on the patio of the Tennant Avenue Starbucks. Busted! If you know their husbands, point out the laid-back attitude.
Christine reports that her son Tyler, a fifth-grader at San Martin Gwinn Elementary, had a great attitude for the first day of school, and her daughter Ashley, a seventh-grader at Britton, remained "cool under the collar."
Lara saw her children Morgan, in first grade at San Martin Gwinn Elementary, and Blake, a seventh-grader at Britton, off before joining the other madres. Marlene had two down (Sean - a senior at Sobrato, and Ryan - also at Sobrato) and two to go next week at St. Catherine's (William, who is in second grade, and Nathan, in fifth grade). Marlene was half-relaxed.
Seated at the table next to Jenkins, Petterson and Mooni (sounds like a law firm) was another group of happy-to-be-free moms. Sheryl Dalton (an L.O. alumni) and Heidi Golden ( a shy, reserved lady - not!) both took time out from their judging panel as the Karaoke Judges at Box Seat to kvetch with Becky Oswald - children are Race, a senior at Live Oak; and Wyatt, a sophomore at Sobrato - and Alora Bell, whose child is Janelle, a fifth-grader at Paradise Elementary.
The ladies share a love for their children and call themselves "Bunko Buddies." As for the atmosphere of their games, according to them: "You'd think you're playing with sailors!"
It gets a little rough - and very full of attitude.
Ciao for now, and keep it positive.
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