The first time I recall being confronted with the concept of these terms and what they meant was two decades ago. The college ski team I raced on had decided to set up an annual race meet co-hosted between our team and another school’s team.
Our team captain remarked to me how he had cursed us by putting “1st Annual” on the commemorative shirts for the event, saying, “This presupposes there’s a 2nd annual event that we’re going to celebrate.” As fate would have it, we never did celebrate that 2nd annual race meet.
Every time thereafter, whenever I attended an event, annual, inaugural, 1st, 2nd, 42nd, no matter how it was named or what number in succession it was, I thought of this ski team conversation. If it was the first, I wondered if they’d make it to next year. Would it truly be an annual event? Would they make it to 14th? Or how did they make it to the 21st?
That was until January of 2020, when we were having our “Inaugural Board Meeting.” Dun-dun-dunnnnnn! There it was, and this time, it was mine. It was going to be my job, our job, to carry this forward and ensure that there would be a 2nd annual board meeting.
As I called everyone together for a photo, the voice-of-doubts-past came into mind. Shooing it from thought quickly, I put on my truest smile. “Let’s go!”
Comentarios