Saba's Story

I’ve been struggling with the opening line of this story because it really touched me and I wanted to do it justice. 

At one point I was going to highlight my story with the juxtaposition of teens sporting meaningless tattoos, more concerned with fitting in than making a statement. 

After that idea was scrapped, I researched the historical significance of the Peacock according to Hinduism in the hopes of finding a natural bridge to the story, but it seemed a little contrived. 

So I settled on this. 

I would like to tell you a story. 

It’s a simple story of love and creativity, so I will tell it simply. My son has a friend named Saba, a confident young lady who makes eye contact and conversation easily. Recently, Saba was at our house when my son hosted a birthday party for a friend and I noticed that she sported a tattoo of a Peacock feather on her back, beneath her left shoulder.

I meant to ask, but got caught up in another conversation and didn’t pursue it. Fortunately, my wife Jill took the time to explore the history of Saba’s tattoo and uncovered an incredibly touching story. 

When Saba was a little girl, one of her best friends was her grandpa Al, or as she called him... ‘Baba’. Al was a simple man with a contagious smile who probably never thought of himself as being clever. He worked hard as a young man, and now as a grandfather his greatest pleasure was spending time with his granddaughter. Baba used to take Saba for walks in the park, treasured times for both of them but especially for Saba because on many of these journeys they would find a Peacock feather. Saba loved the brilliantly coloured feathers and was always amazed at their continued good fortune. 

Throughout Saba’s early childhood, her grandparents cared for her while her parents were working and her relationship with her Baba continued to flourish. Today, as a young adult, Saba considers grandpa Al to be the single most influential person in her life. High praise indeed for a grandfather to have played such a role. 

When she was in her early teens Saba made a discovery that revealed something else about her grandfather. Saba discovered that in the area in which she grew up, there were no Peacocks. 

Before Baba would appear for one of their cherished walks, he would go to the store and buy a Peacock feather. Then he would meticulously hide it along the route for Saba to ‘find’. 

It was an enchanting game for him, and it became a magical, unforgettable memory for her. 

Baba passed away some years ago, but he was still alive and well when Saba made this discovery. She was able to thank him in person for creating those memories although I suspect she had already given him the greatest gifts he could receive. Every giggle of uncontrolled delight and every expression of wide-eyed wonderment were no doubt precious snapshots that Al reflected back on fondly and often. 

 Without knowing it, Baba’s simple gesture of love and creativity forged a relationship that would never be forgotten and shaped a life that would forever be a tribute to him.

Thank you, Saba for letting me share your story. 

Daryl

Suburban Auto thinks outside the trunk

This campaign has been around for a long time but it makes me laugh every time I watch it. 


I don't know where they found the lead actor who appears in each of the commercials, but he is magnificent. 


Here are four spots for your viewing pleasure. 


Daryl

IT'S ABOUT TIME

One of the best lessons I learned in advertising is: don’t sell the journey, sell the destination.

You could spend a million dollars advertising “Air Botswana” – the airline may have the most luxurious airplanes, the most efficient hosts and world class cuisine, but if people aren’t interested in going to Botswana, you’re wasting your time.

Montblanc sells elegant, efficient and well crafted time pieces. You know… watches. Remember them?  I don’t know about you, but most people I know have stopped wearing a watch because they get the time from their cell phone. So, if you’re Montblanc, your challenge is to help people appreciate ‘time’. The value of a minute. The fleeting wonder of a second.

I won’t lie to you. I’m not getting a gut-instinct one way or the other about this campaign. I have no idea if it will rekindle an interest in wearing a timepiece again. I think it does a great job getting people excited about their promotion, and I think it makes them about time. Buying a watch may be another thing. It’s an exciting gamble and I’ll be interested to see how it turns out.

All I know is, when I watched this ad… for just a moment… I missed my watch.

Hey you... BEND OVER

Hey you… BEND OVER!

Sometimes advertising coaxes its target audience.

Sometimes it begs, seduces or even threatens the intended audience to sell a product.

On the odd occasion, to my delight, advertising will slap you upside the head, knee you in the groin and throw you down a flight of stairs to get your attention. You gotta admire spunk.

Why would someone have to take such drastic measures?

Well… someone would have to do this when the target audience is very resistant to the product or service that is being promoted. The message I’m referring to in this blog is ‘long life and good health’.  Yup, someone is selling ‘long life and good health’ but the target audience (men) isn’t interested. In their minds, someone is selling them ‘a finger up the ass’. Naturally, the only way to get through to these guys is to take their childish fears and anxieties, stomp on them and throw them right back in their face to show them how foolish they are.

Enjoy.

The Encounter

At 5 AM one July morning in 2007, I awoke to the sounds of my daughter screaming. I flew down the stairs to her room on the main floor and found her sitting up in bed, staring at the foot of the bed and still screaming.

She was yelling that someone had grabbed her foot. A quick search of the room confirmed that no one was hiding in the closet or under the bed. The alarm was still set. No one had entered or left the house. At the time, my daughter was 17;  she had always been very responsible and we had no reason to believe that she was lying.

She recounted the story for my wife and I. A few moments before the incident, she had woken up and was lying in bed on her back, relaxing. Suddenly, she felt a distinct pressure on her right foot. At first she wasn’t alarmed because she thought it might be her cat, Mozart, reaching up and pulling on her to get her attention.  Mozart often slept in her room and let her know when he needed to leave. What my daughter didn’t know was that Mozart was in our room at the time. When she sat up, intending to shoo him away, there was nothing there. She could still feel the firm pressure pushing on her foot, but there was no cat clinging to her. In fact, it felt like a human hand was holding her foot and when she started to scream, it let go.

My daughter was so convinced that this wasn’t her imagination, she didn’t sleep in that room for several weeks.

This is why we believed her.

When we first moved to our current neighbourhood, we lived in a smaller house just down the street. Over the years, we got to know Mark and Sandra in the ‘big white house’ down the street. They had made a number of improvements to their house including the addition of a large back porch and a bedroom for their oldest daughter. We always admired their house and when Mark got a job offer in the states, they offered it to us before they listed with a realtor.

Two years after we moved in, we received a phone call informing us that Mark had been killed in a plane crash. The crash happened in June, 2007, one month before my daughter’s paranormal encounter.

For the first few weeks, none of us spoke about our thoughts concerning the encounter; we didn’t want to make it more ‘real’. But when we did start discussing it, we all had the same feeling. If there is such a thing as spirits, it would make sense that Mark would be drawn back to the house he lived in for so long… to a room that he had built for his oldest daughter. If the essence of the person we knew was suddenly ripped from his corporeal existence in a violent crash, he could be forgiven for being confused and returning to the wrong home. He probably felt it was his daughter he was reaching out to, in a comforting sense to let her know he was there.

Although she always believed that the encounter was not hostile, my daughter was uncomfortable returning to her room. I had to sleep there for a few nights to show her that the ‘haunting’ had passed. I have to admit though, for the first night, I kept my feet away from the end of the bed.

Eventually, my daughter resumed sleeping in her room again, and to the best of our knowledge, Mark has never returned. 

Recently, we had another bizarre experience with more sinister overtones, but that’s a story for another time.

Out of respect for our friends, their names in this story were changed. However, all other facts in this story were recounted as accurately as possible.