If you’ve read my autobiography––D is for Dysfunctional…and Doo Wop!––you’ll know that I am a retired professor of organizational behavior. As I used to tell my students at Purdue University, “I’m very organized, but my behavior leaves a lot to be desired.”

I claim that my dysfunctional adult behavior was the result of early childhood value programming––those implicit lessons beaten into children’s psyches by parents, teachers, relatives, and the society in which they live. Those lessons effectively squelched my voice and I could never say what I was really thinking and feeling. Consequently, I kept my mouth shut and married the wrong men––again and again and again! Worse yet, I never had the courage to follow my dream––to be a professional singer.

Finally, after three failed marriages and disappointment in career choices, my brother encouraged me to return to college to pursue a doctorate degree. After all, I had always been happiest in the classroom. During my first semester of study in the Ph.D. program at Purdue, my professor in a course of Strategic Management said something to me that would lead to a complete turn-around of my value system. She said, “Your test scores and case studies are excellent, but I cannot give you an A in this class because you never speak up and participate in class discussions.”

Well, I was determined to get an A in the course! During the next class session, the professor asked us to demonstrate our understanding of the corporate strategy of “incrementalism.” I decided to offer a story I sometimes told during my barbershop quartet performances:

“One of the local farmers had a pig that could actually talk. However, the pig had one leg missing. When the farmer was asked what happened to the pig’s leg, he drawled, ‘Well…ya wouldn’t wanna butcher a pig that smart all at once, would ya?’ And THAT is incrementalism!”

I don’t suppose the professor realized she was responsible for an epiphany––i.e., a flash of insight that can change someone’s life direction. That incident was the beginning of my speaking my own truth. In a few months, I met a man who turned out to be my soul mate. When he asked me to marry him, I told him we needed to conduct a realistic job preview first. I said, “I’m going to be a college professor––teaching, researching, and writing. I won’t have time to be a ‘normal’ housewife, cooking and doing the laundry.”

He said, “That’s okay. I love to cook, and I think I do the laundry as well as any woman.”

I said, “Honey, I’m yours.” We were happily married until the day he died of a heart attack at age sixty-six. Oh…and I made an A in the class.

Here’s a quote from Matt LeBlanc that accurately defines my personal philosophy: “I believe that laughter is the best emotional band-aid in the world. It’s like nature’s Neosporin.”