Austin, TEXAS, December 17, 2005 — One year for a holiday card, FFP and I sent a piece out that must have puzzled a lot of the recepients. We made it look like a game. Well, we decorated the text with 'game' squares that said things like "Must Return to Go" and "File Chapter 11" as well as nonsense things we used to say like "Serious, Heavy and Right On." We called it the game of 'If.' We explained it like this:

Now we are not talking about the game most of us play on a regular basis—If I'd bought Chrysler at 3 I could have retired by now and if I'd bought a piece of land on Cat Mountain in 1968 I could be swimming in Acapulco.

No, we play the opposite side. We pick out the good things that have happened to us and think about what if we hadn't done the right things to be in a position for the desired outcome to take place.

Now I don't know what year it was that we did this but you can see that it's very dated. No mention of Dell stock. Anyway, we went on to 'play' the game to illustrate it for our recepients. We both expounded on the turning points and decisions that brought us together.

I find it interesting now to look back at this. I mentioned the circumstances that brought me to be reading a want ad from a company in Austin that I answered. The company where FFP worked and I met him. His account included the decisions that kept him alive in 1966 during the Charles Whitman shootings and the relatively thin thread of decisions that landed him at that company that was running the ad for the job I would get. I find it interesting that we did not mention that FFP actually placed the ad in the Dallas paper for the job. How amazing is that?

The game can be continued. I am retired because of a thin thread of fortuitous decisions. A job I got because FFP made me a nice typeset resumé that stood out in the day before everyone had fancy printers. Where I met someone working there who FFP had known forever and who was a brilliant and a very nice guy. And after a few tortured turns for the company (I left, worked two other places and came back when they were in a completely different business...UNIX machines versus terminals) the guy FFP knew left because he heard about a place another guy went to work instead of taking the job we'd offered. And he hired me there. I worked there thirteen years and it was my lottery job: I got commissions (yes, a piece of the gross sales of products I worked on) and I got stock options. That certainly propelled the savings that allowed me to retire early. Or at all.

If is a great game when played correctly. You ignore the things you might regret. And embrace the things you are happy about...and realize that those things were one outcome in a million. You are invited to play and to have a happier holiday knowing just how lucky you really are.