Symbolic Pens, Credit Union Trauma & Being Thankful

The internet is good for one thing: Reminding me of history.

I take a lot of notes each day. I do that not only for journalistic purposes, but because I have a terrible memory of people’s names and what people I’ve spoken with for stories in the past, and even who I’ve worked with in previous jobs. I first recognized this brain-dump problem in high school and I’ve never found a solution that keeps my brain from forgetting.

It’s often that I’ll be speaking with a co-worker or someone in the credit union world and we’ll be discussing some previous story or event that I was heavily involved in, and they will say something like, “You remember him. You both were talking about interest rates and he was wearing a green tie. You remember?” I might vaguely remember the conversation, but everything else feels like it was wiped out of my brain’s hard drive. At that point, I just feel stupid and guilty, and like the worst person ever. Then I Google the person and see their face and it all comes back.

Is it some missed diagnosis by my doctors? Or is it purely laziness on my part? I don’t know and I can’t remember that one doctor’s name right now.

On the flip side of this memory hole, I do retain news events in crisis situations, even down to how far I was into my most recent cup of coffee, and even the exact mug I was drinking from or that exact highway exit I was on while on the phone. That stuff is burned into my mind for some reason.

For me, it’s similar to never forgetting traumatic childhood events. You just can’t shake those things.

I have a number of random pens I use while taking notes and almost each pen represents a crisis event that happened this year: I used the blue “Staff Force Personnel Services” pen while on a call about the damage from Hurricane Florence, the “Glass Nickel Pizza” pen during the natural gas explosions in Massachusetts, the non-descriptive Bic pen with the blue cap while on the phone with Hawaii credit union executives who were concerned about lava flows, and the black pen with the nice rubber grip while talking with credit union people who lost their homes during Hurricane Michael.

The most recent example of this was with my fancy-looking silver pen with the light blue and squishy rubber grip, which I snagged from a credit union conference – the “National Credit Union Foundation” pen. It’s been used for researching credit unions impacted by the wildfires in California. No, not the California wildfires that happened in August – the ones happening as I type right now in Paradise, Calif., and down in the southern part of the state.

I was just on the phone with Natasha Chilingerian, our managing editor, who’s in Los Angeles at the moment, and she said, “Everything smells like a campfire.”

It seems fitting that I’ve been using the Foundation pen since it seems likely that they’re going to be called into action with CUAid, again. I’m currently trying to get an official tally of how many times CUAid has been activated in 2018.

We, as a collective credit union industry, have been through a lot this year. We’ve reported on so many tragedies and maybe if I took some time to study the psychology of it all, I’d think that’s one reason we worked so hard to bring back our Community News coverage in print and online. Because, let’s be honest, we need rain to help us appreciate the sunshine.

It’s like that time my mom was egged on by my father and siblings to try riding one of our dirt bikes just to see if she could. My mom, then in her 30s, climbed on the green Kawasaki 120 without a helmet, clicked her left foot to activate the gears, popped an accidental wheelie and almost immediately crashed into the back of our house. Then, for several days after that, 11-year-old me was so thankful that she was alive I made her coffee each morning until my brain moved on as 11-year-olds’ brains do.

This industry gives me, and others at CU Times, a lot of rain and a lot of sunshine. My news persona gets excited, and not in the way a six-year-old kid does on Christmas morning, when a crisis happens. It’s the kind of excited that leads to a deep and true desire to get the news out to our audiences as fast and accurately as possible. And each time there is a crisis, there’s typically a pen associated with it.

Maybe it’s time I try to rewire my brain to associate the good news with my pens, and be even more grateful and thankful that I get to work with this staff and inside this industry of yours. Too often my head is buried, as I’m sure your heads are, just to get the work done well and on time.

Right now, I’m putting down my pens and raising my head up to say to you all how thankful I am of you, your executive teams and your staff members. You’re doing some brave work out there in your communities and, in some cases, it’s literally dangerous work. What you’re doing to serve and bring much-needed financial services from a credit union’s cooperative perspective is that sunshine we all need.

To our credit union friends recovering from Hurricanes Florence and Michael, to our credit union friends recovering from the wildfires this summer, to our credit union friends still recovering from Hurricanes Maria and Harvey and to our credit union friends whose homes were lost during the fires burning through California this week, we are thankful for you. Many of you won’t have homes to celebrate Thanksgiving in this year. We will continue reporting about the help you need until those needs are met. These are the things that do not get erased from my brain.

This holiday season, I hope all of us can take time to think about our CU friends in need and do what we can to rebuild their lives.

My notes for this column were written with a black FedEx pen I accidentally took from the package delivery store.

Michael Ogden is executive editor for CU Times. He can be reached at mogden@cutimes.com.