Yeah, I'm old enough to remember. Like a lot of Floridians, my parents and I were in North Carolina, escaping the summer heat and marveling at the notion that, in some places, the ground didn't actually have to be wet, sandy or flat. I was about the age my son is now, which is too young to have a real understanding of the significance of, well, anything, really. But old enough that significant things could have a lasting impact.
Instead of staying at my cousin's vacation cabin, where we and everyone else in the family sometimes stayed for a week or two in the summer, that year my parents wanted to see some different trees and rocks. They rented a cabin in the woods, down a long rock and dirt road, by a stream. I have no idea where, in North Carolina, this place was or is, although I can only imagine it's been developed into something much more suburban by now.
I was pretty interested in the stream, because it had rocks that could make really big splashes. We didn't have rocks in Florida, and we didn't have streams that moved fast. But a stream can only be so interesting, and only for so long, when you're that young.
There was another Florida family up the rocky road a little bit -- the Dingers. They owned a small vacation house, and spent every summer escaping the heat. Unlike our relatively rustic vacation rental, their house had a TV. They also had a kid, about my age (a year older, actually). But she was a girl, and she was used to being in North Carolina all summer, so her interest in splashing rocks in the stream, and in me, was minimal, at best. Still, I remember Sharon Dinger as being pretty nice.
What I really remember about Sharon Dinger is sitting on the couch with her way past either of our bedtimes, with both her parents and mine in the room, all of us silent, and fixated on the television. Watching Neil Armstrong climb down that ladder and step on the moon was significant. Significant in that way that has a lasting impact.
Disney didn't own Florida yet. We had beaches, we had orange groves, we had swamps, and we had the Cape. And the Cape was cool. That's where the rockets and the astronauts were. Just being from Florida, you felt a sort of connection to the space program. And now, that space program had actually put some guys on the moon.
After that night, every kid I knew wanted to be be an astronaut or a rocket scientist. None of the kids I knew ever became one, but none of us became cowboys or Indians, either. What changed then and there, for a lot of us, was the direction of our imaginations. Instead of spending days fantasizing about the old west, we spent days fantasizing about the future. And for more than just a couple of my friends, this realization that you could actually do something that had never, ever been done before translated into successful careers and major accomplishments.
Years after that night in North Carolina, I first heard the famous Leo Burnett quote: "When you reach for the stars you may not quite get one, but you won't come up with a handful of mud, either." Clearly, I didn't become an astronaut. And I'm no rocket scientist. But I do think that throughout my career as a director, and an ad guy, I've consciously tried to push for stuff that hasn't been done before. There's not enough of that drive in advertising, imo. Sometimes, it's little things. But, to me, it's important to focus forward, even if it means taking small steps. And while I can't be absolutely certain, I'm pretty sure the seed for that thinking in me was planted when I was sitting on Sharon Dinger's parents' couch on July 20, 1969.
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