After a few days off work from being quite ill, I finally made my "debut" appearance in the office today. I'm sure my employees are bitching about my absence the whole 4 days. I'm not about to play my violin & explain to them how I couldn't even get out of bed for a few days! Not a fan of basking self-pity in a hat!
Anyway, I came almost as abruptly as I left. ;) Went straight into the meeting room where I know the rest would be on a Friday at this time. They were discussing about our own marketing campaign. I was quiet, listening to their ideas for a while. They were talking about finding reasons to send out greetings so we will be remembered.
So I said let’s not forget fun stuff like Halloween. And all thoughts were circled into this idea. We even talked about having a party for our clients. I suddenly exclaimed excitedly “I’ll dress up as PIPI LONGSTOCKING!”
Then there was silence. There were a few smile but most of all, there were faces of a question mark on the faces of our younger staff.
“Who is PIPI LONGSTOCKING?” One of the staff finally asked.
Goodness me! I finally realised that most of my designers are in their 20s. I grew up with Sesame Street & Electric Company. They grew up with Wiggles & Spongebob Square pants… They don’t know who Smurfs were till Hollywood decided to make an animation about it last year! Oh gosh…. I suddenly felt so old, ancient….I’m a dinosaur! Almost extinct!
So I looked it up quickly & showed the rest about PIPI from WIKIPEDIA - Pippi Longstocking (Swedish Pippi Långstrump) is a fictional character in a series of children's books by Swedish author Astrid Lindgren, and adapted into multiple films and television series. Pippi was named by Lindgren's then nine-year-old daughter, Karin, who requested a get-well story from her mother one day when she was home sick from school.Nine-year-old Pippi is unconventional, assertive, and has superhuman strength, being able to lift her horse one-handed without difficulty. She frequently mocks and dupes adults she encounters, an attitude likely to appeal to young readers; however, Pippi usually reserves her worst behavior for the most pompous and condescending of adults. Pippi's anger is reserved for the most extreme cases, such as when a man ill-treats her horse. Like Peter Pan, Pippi does not want to grow up. She is the daughter of a buccaneer captain and as such has adventurous stories to tell. She has four best friends, two animal (her horse and a monkey) and two human, the neighbor's children Tommy and Annika
They were like… “Oh,ok”
I felt so not cool! Damn it! I wanted to argue about it and defend myself and I was like … Hmmm, what’s the point? I am older than everyone in the office. Mind you, being 36 and being the boss ain’t that shabby either. But 36 seems ancient to most of my employees.
I am working in the advertising company whereby being hip is part of breathing technique! We have to be “IN” all the time…. Our designers are constantly checking out new bogus ideas. I do struggle sometimes to stay abreast to the fast pace life of an advertising company but I have to say, I love the excitement of the advertising industry! I’m a little addicted to the thrill of presenting our final product & hearing people gasped in awe….
Anyway back to PIPI. One of my employees even went on saying “Hey that’s a great idea, we can have that as a theme for our party! The old animated characters!” I threw a book at him. He ducked & missed it! Damn it! He so deserve it!
“It’s not OLD!! You are just 8 years younger than me! There must be something overlapping!”
But the whole gang agreed that our clients probably would find it funny to have the characters they are familiar with (at their age). So, they were looking at Care Bears, Flint Stones, etc.
I am not that old …. Am I?
