Both Jennifer and I were blessed with a lot of good people who influenced our lives and who were great mentors.
We were both blessed with good parents. Now Jennifer's older siblings will tell you that she had a different set of parents than they did. They are probably correct. Mick and Rose (but Mick in particular) had certainly mellowed by the time Jennifer joined the clan. I think they also learned a few things with the older kids. However Jennnifer also no doubt had a different way of dealing with her parents as well. She pretty much had them wrapped around her little finger.
I also have been blessed with great parents who made lots of sacrifices over the year so that my sisters and I could have a lot of different opportunities and experiences in our lives.
Both of us were also blessed with good siblings.
In our educational lives we had some good educators and mentors who influenced us and gave us the knowledge and tools to go out in the world and be successful.
In our work lives we again were blessed with a lot of good mentors and sponsors who gave us opportunities, challenged us to do things that at times seemed impossible and also kept us inline when we needed it. Now don't get me wrong we also worked with and for a few assholes and/or dingbats but they fortunately were very much in the minority.
When Greg and I visited the other night we talked about some of the fun times we had over the years at Marathon and some of the pranks and jokes we were part of during our time at Marathon. In todays work world we probably would been asked to pack our bags and hit the road. But I tell you we had some good laughs and times over the years.
We also worked with some characters over the years. One thing Jennifer and I were fortunate to be able to do is work offshore in the Gulf of Mexico. This work environment is very different than most work environments. The people who do this day in and day out have a different work experience than some one who works in a office or factory.
These folks work, live, eat and sleep together for weeks at a time. So they certainly develop different relationships than a normal work force does. Some of these folks spend more time together with their co-workers than they do with their families. The timeframe they work can and does vary. Some will work seven days on and then be off seven days. Some may work 14 days on and then be off 14 days. Some may be on 28 days and off 28 days.
Whatever the schedule is when you are around people for that length of time you develop relationships. Some good some not so good. Also depending on the location you may have just two or three guys working/living together or you may have a dozen or so guys working together.
Marathon had various sized offshore platforms in the Gulf of Mexico so the staffing on these facilities differed. The smaller platforms may only have 2-3 people on them the larger platforms may have a dozen or more people on them. The larger platforms usually had cooking and cleaning staff who fixed meals, did laundry, made beds etc for them. The smaller platforms the guys had to do all that for themselves. So it is a very dynamic and interesting work experience.
Anyway, the folks would pull all kind of pranks or shenanigans on each other. There were some classic ones over the years. Thinking about some of those today will still get me laughing. Now folks that work offshore are usually pretty guarded about what they will share. Because it can and does give their co-workers ammunition.
For example one time this guy shared that he was dieting to lose weight. So his co-workers put into a place a scheme to screw with him. One of the guys on the crew wife was a seamstress. So the co-workers were smuggling this guys work clothes home and the guys wife would alter them each week just taking them in a little bit here and there at a time. Each week this guy would come to the shore base (place where guys report to work and wait for the transportation either helicopter or boat to take them to their platform) and he would be bragging about how much weight he had been losing and then he would get offshore and his work clothes would still be a little snug. The guys would razz him that he was full of shit and that he had not lost any weight. So this poor bastard would double up on his dieting. They did this to this poor guys for about three hitches and there was no doubt he was losing weight, but each week his work clothes were still snug. This poor guy was going nuts about it and was chewing on the catering folks for shrinking his clothes when they washed them. Anyway this went on for about three hitches. Well then the guy (whose wife was the seamstress) had her take all the alterations out and return the clothes to their regular size and this guy put the clothes on and they barely fit. He had to find some rope and make a belt to keep his pants up for that hitch. So needless to say most folks learned over the years to be guarded about sharing stuff they were doing in their personal lives.
Anyway Jennifer and I were blessed to have a lot of great people in our lives that guided and mentored us over the years. I am blessed to still have a lot of these people in my lives today and am meeting new folks as I work my way on this new journey.
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