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Oct

What's Your Line?

Mick Fleming on Monday, October 24, 2011 at 12:00:00 am

Reunion with Cornell University championship football team was a blast this past weekend. The stories of our prowess grow more amazing each decade. Fantastic connections to be made with old friends. An energy engineer in Alaska, Ivy League academics, a Madison Ave. ad agency CEO, politicos in DC, business leaders from Chicago, two judges, a machinist, a truck company owner, a truck driver, an oncologist, two surgeons, a dentist, a coach or two, a juvenile crime specialist and the radio announcer of the Colorado Rockies. Oh, and one fairly well-known Hollywood star who sports a Super Bowl ring.

When I attempted to answer the "what's your line?" questions of my old teammates, there were, as usual, tilted heads and quizzical looks. They pretend to understand what the president of an association of chamber people might actually do. All of those smart, wired, experienced people find it easier to understand what a mortgage-backed securities analyst (yes, we have two of those in the group) might do than what an association executive does. Finally, I found an analogy they could relate to. Since so many are lawyers, I just started answering the cocktail party questions -- "ACCE is like the American Bar Association for chamber of commerce people." "Ohhhhh, that sounds . . . interesting. Have you tried the shrimp?"

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