What People Will Forget

This is my Uncle Frank Buchanan. I can remember when I was 4 he took me to the airport and sat me in the passenger seat of a small two-seater plane and asked me if I wanted to fly. My response what that "I mighten' get killed."

A year earlier he came to my house in Jackson, Mississippi and brought me a red plastic play telephone. It was so cool. It rang too. He would mispronounce my name on purpose and rub my head. A few years later he would be the victim of a car crash. He was forced off the highway by a reckless car.

I read a comment in an marketing article I was reading two weeks ago, "People will forget what you said and what you did, but they will not forget how you made them feel." My immediate thoughts were of my Uncle Frank. I was such a little guy, I could not possibly remember what he would have said to me, but he made me feel very special.

Fifteen years ago, at age 40, I finally got my pilots license. This past Spring I took my 4 year old grandson, Bailey, to the airport and sat him in a Cessna 152. "Bailey, you want to go flying?" "No, grandaddy, you don't know how to make it fly...let's go home." Well another 4 year old Buchanan turns down the opportunity to fly. But it's not about what Bailey did or didn't do that day, it is about how I make him feel.

On the flip side of this topic....I have to admit that there are some people in my circle of relationships that I don't have a real interest in hanging out with. I can't pinpoint anything they said or did, but I have feelings around them. This year I will not let those feelings keep me from relationships. I like the way Abe Lincoln put it, "I don't like that man....I must get to know him better."