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August 7, 2024 13 mins

We make 100 little decisions every day. Do they all matter?

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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Murphy Salmon, Jody After the Show podcast, and
you can subscribe for free if you're just stumbling across us,
and get it delivered every single day to your favorite podcast.
Ask yes after the show, and then every day the
actual want to see the actual show, not like this
is fake, but you know, the entire show as it happens,
you know, live on the radio is consolidated down into

(00:22):
a podcast too, so you can catch up. Life's about
to get real busy with back to school.

Speaker 2 (00:26):
You know, yes, you know how you make a hundred
little decisions every day. It's just life. You make little
decisions every day and sometimes they don't matter, and then
other times they matter a lot. I learned something yesterday
that would have completely changed my life that was all

(00:46):
based on one little decision. And this is I went
to visit with my uncle Terry, and I had coffee
with him yesterday. And he's a very special person to me.
He was new in the family when I was a child,
a little small child, and he is one of these
people that loves children. And I was, you know, a
small child when he started dating my aunt Jackie and

(01:08):
then married her, and every kid in the family loves
being with him. But I was almost like the first
one to find and fall in love with him as
other fun uncle, you know what I mean. So we
go and we meet and we have coffee in your
neck of the woods, Sam. We went to a little
coffee shop not far from you because that's where he lives,
in your neck of the woods, and we sat there
for two hours just talking catching up. He's a retired

(01:31):
police officer, and we started just talking about whatever life stories.
And he told me, Murphy, I didn't know this. I
just thought he grew up in the same town where
he met my aunt Jackie at high school. I knew
they met in high school and then they got married. Well,

(01:51):
I knew a little bit about his past, that he
had moved around his whole life and he ended up
you know, he and he was going to school about
ten twenty miles away high school, and at the end
of his junior year, he had he had the choice
that he could go to the high school he was

(02:12):
at and graduate with all of his peers, or he
could go to this other high school, this small town
high school, and he changed schools, and it was his
decision to change schools and go his senior year to
this small high school where he met my aunt and
then married her Kay, And he said, he doesn't even
know why he made the last minute choice to do that,

(02:32):
but he just did it. And I would never have
known him had he not met her. And I just
find that it keeps coming into my mind. I can't
believe it.

Speaker 1 (02:43):
Well, you know, when paths cross, and I mean, who knows.
Something could have been steering him to that decision, or
it could have.

Speaker 3 (02:50):
Been probably tell you God, change yes, little little, one little.

Speaker 2 (02:55):
Decision that changed the whole course of his life, because
he's hugely important in our family. We ended up talking
about Papa, who died a year a little more than
a year ago, and he was telling me yesterday something
that I never really knew. I knew Papa meant a
lot to him, but he said, look, I had three
dads in my whole life, and he really was the
most impactful. Your grandfather and he you know, he means

(03:16):
his biological father, his stepfather, and then my papa, who
was his father in law for years, was truly impactful.
And he got emotional talking about it. It's just all
this little, a little it seems like a little decision
to a seventeen year old kid that you've moved high.

Speaker 1 (03:33):
Schools but it's not Yeah, well, you know, it.

Speaker 3 (03:36):
Set him up for his whole life.

Speaker 1 (03:38):
The uh. Here's another example of how one decision can
really change everything. My mother almost became a nun, correct,
which would have changed everything. I don't think we'd be
doing this podcast right.

Speaker 3 (03:51):
Now, correct, you wouldn't be doing anything right.

Speaker 2 (03:53):
Yeah, So do you know did you ever have the
conversation with your with Merle we called you know, you
called her.

Speaker 1 (04:00):
We call our parents their first name.

Speaker 2 (04:02):
Did you ever find out why she changed her mind
about becoming a nun? Did you ever have that convo?

Speaker 1 (04:09):
If we did, it didn't stick out with me. I
know why she left to go, you know, because she
was trying to get away from a rough childhood situation.
But I don't know that once she was out at
the convent where you know, she went to school for
two years, I think she just found out it really
wasn't for her. She realized that she was I don't

(04:32):
know that just that wasn't going to be you know
her course, it's not that she wasn't a religious person.
She just didn't want to, you know, and then after that, yes, yeah,
when she moved back. Yeah, they were high school sweethearts.
But that would have changed the course of.

Speaker 4 (04:46):
Things, no kidding, Yeah, do you know me, Sam and
Jodi show right now.

Speaker 3 (04:52):
You think we would.

Speaker 2 (04:55):
Is there anything in your life that's a decision like
that that you heard of and you're like, wow, that
could have change changed everything And it's such a small thing. Now,
your mom making that decision, where if it wasn't small,
it was big for her life.

Speaker 1 (05:06):
Was huge.

Speaker 4 (05:06):
I can't think of any off the top of my.

Speaker 1 (05:09):
I have another one. I was offered a job one time,
long before I knew either of you, actually, and I
was interview interviewed for it, and I was actually I
did not get the job. I was turned down, But
it turned out three years later it was at a
radio station and the company that owned that radio station

(05:31):
went belly up and they fired everyone and it disappeared.
Literally the station did not come back for like six
or seven years or something like that. So if that
had worked out, and I was really I was bummed
that I did not get that job. I had interviewed
really hard for it and all that, and then you know,
could there's no way of knowing. But you know, I
mean three years later, I would have been completely out
of a job.

Speaker 2 (05:50):
And then you may have changed your course anyway of
action having had that.

Speaker 3 (05:55):
You just never know.

Speaker 4 (05:55):
I guess you're saying that reminds me when I when
I when I graduated college and I sent out resumes
and all that stuff. I had two offers, the one
I took and another radio station offer that was in
a completely another city and another part of the state.

Speaker 3 (06:10):
That could have been a thing.

Speaker 4 (06:12):
Yeah. So if I had done that, yeah, that would
have been no Murphy Salmon Jody.

Speaker 2 (06:16):
Something else I learned about my uncle Terry yesterday and
was that. You know, he was a police officer for many,
many years. And I remember I was a little girl
in the family when he got it whatever, went to
the academy and became a police officer. And I asked him,
why did you make that decision? And I expected, when
you ask someone why they became a police officer, you

(06:37):
almost expect this. I wanted to serve you almost expect this.
I had this experience. It made me want to you
almost expect that. And he said he had been doing painting.
He was a painter, and he he was tired of
breathing all that, dealing with that, doing that. Years before,
when he was a kid, he cut tobacco and that
was hard work too, and he was tired of doing

(06:59):
that kind of work. But he couldn't find work. Times
were tough and tight. He was like, you know, I
had just met your dad and your family, and I
asked him to help me get on at the plant.
My dad worked at a plant, and he was like,
they weren't hiring. And it was really a good old
boy sort of like if your dad works here, you
can work here. But he said he applied for ten jobs,

(07:22):
ten jobs a plant here, you know, a big industrial
place here, and the police department, and the police department
called him back, interviewed him just like a across the
desk discussion interview, and then called him back and said,
you're accepted if you want to go through the academy.
He took it because he needed work. That's not the

(07:43):
story I expected to get. And he was a fantastic
police officer. He was a fantastic police officer.

Speaker 3 (07:51):
You know.

Speaker 2 (07:52):
I know that because of the stories that he's told
me over his life. You sit down for coffee with him,
and this is what I love about him too, instead
of like if I tell him, hey, uncle Terry, I'm
having a problem, you know with Murphy about this, not
that I talk.

Speaker 3 (08:07):
About you like that.

Speaker 2 (08:10):
No, no, no, like we was just Michy, like someone
in a family situation. Okay, a family situation that I'm
talking to him about. He will not come back with Jody,
this is what you should do. And here's why he
won't do that. He will tell you a story that
is similar and it's usually from the police department, and

(08:32):
and it's unforgettable. It's like, hey, I walked into this
house one time and this was happening a husband and
a wife. This was happening, and I got in the
middle and before I could leave, you know, it was
happening again.

Speaker 3 (08:45):
Things like that.

Speaker 2 (08:45):
He tells stories like that, but it always he'll tell
the story and then he will finish it with so
you can't get in the middle of that. Jody, and
I do learn. I get a good perspective from him anyway.
I just it just makes you realize that you make
a hundred decisions a day. Sometimes it's about what's for dinner,

(09:08):
and that's not as impactful. But sometimes if it's about
what class to take, where to go to school, you know,
what job to take. It can change the course of
your life and therefore the course of other people's lives.

Speaker 1 (09:22):
Yeah, it's the flip side of it also is you know,
regrets over some decisions. But the truth about that is
you make the best decisions that you can at the
time with the information that you have. That's why they
talk about hindsight being so twenty twenty. Yeah, despite your
best efforts, you know, it's it was John Lennon that
said life is what happens while you're busy making other plans,

(09:43):
and you know it's it's it's only that time and
that distance that makes you look back and go, wow,
that's weird. I could have never predicted this would happen.
In fact, a friend of mine who I just saw
it yesterday. He was a friend of mine an elementary school,
well really through middle school and part of high school.
But I have a seen him in thirty years literally,
and he wanted to, you know, connect and it was

(10:06):
a good visit catching up. As we were leaving, the
last thing he said is you know, he says, it's
it's so funny when I think back to when we
were in kindergarten together or in school together. I never
pictured you as being the kind of person that would be,
you know, doing radio or a radio show or whatever.
And I'm like, yeah, media in general. And I said
why he said, well, he said, I just always thought

(10:28):
that you would be a doctor or something. You were
such a brain. His his pec was that I was
a brain, and I was.

Speaker 3 (10:38):
You never saw yourself that way to know.

Speaker 4 (10:39):
I was.

Speaker 1 (10:40):
I was a good I was a good student. But
you know, and and and in my elementary peer group,
a lot of people because I just focused on my work.
I mean, that's what I did. I was also very
introverted at that age. And but I mean by the
time I got to high school, I realized I've got
smarts in different areas, but I'm no genius and I'm
not there's certain things. I'm not going to become a
nuclear physicist or anything like that.

Speaker 3 (11:01):
That's just proved that people see you differently than you
see yourself.

Speaker 1 (11:04):
Exactly sure. And I told them so. I just told
him how that changed. I'd even set out to do this.
It's just like you were saying, the little decisions. The
whole reason that I'm doing this was a chance encounter
with a conversation that I had with somebody who was
doing TV weather, because what I was interested in, you know,
early in high school was media, but I was I

(11:25):
was about the tech part in TV. I liked the
idea of holding a camera and shooting video and putting
those videos together and telling stories that way. I had
zero interest of being in front of the camera. The
tech part was it. And the guy who did local
TV weather said, well, you know, he said, that's okay,
but if you're really thinking about the future and you

(11:48):
want to make money at it, you really need to
consider in front of the camera, or at least try
it so that you know you know what both sides
are before you dive in, because the tech side does
not pay as well as being in front of the camera.
But the first thing you need to do before you
can get in front of a camera at a TV
station is go work at a radio station and hone
your ability to add lib and communicate. And okay, well

(12:11):
there's a high school radio station. Maybe I'll just try that.
And that's that was the decision.

Speaker 3 (12:15):
That led to stock here.

Speaker 1 (12:17):
Yeah, I mean, it's fun. It wasn't my intention. I've
always loved it, and I've always been very passionate about it,
kind of like your uncle Jodie once he became a
police officer. He's a model police officer in this. So
you know, for me, when I got into this, the
passion just kind of, you know, developed.

Speaker 3 (12:34):
Your model broadcaster.

Speaker 4 (12:37):
It's funny you say that because I didn't want to be.
I didn't want to I did not have a voice
for talking, you know, being from New Orleans, I didn't
have the voice for it, and so I wanted to
be TV behind the scenes. Yeah, whether it was the
techno and the equipment or just like director, producer or something.
But it's like, no, I do not want to be
out there using this voice to talk.

Speaker 2 (12:58):
Why because there couldn't There's no such things as I mean,
there are people who have really good voices, but it's
about what you have to say.

Speaker 3 (13:05):
It's not about the sound. I don't think.

Speaker 4 (13:09):
I wish I had an old tape of me. Then
you'd go, whowha, oh it's a good thing, Okay.

Speaker 1 (13:13):
But you can share your little decisions that made you know,
a big change or or whatever. Maybe things didn't turn
out the way you expected, they turned out great. They
didn't turn out so great. Share yours with us on
our Facebook page, or you can email us at Murphy
Salmonjody dot com. Missed any part of the show, get
it all on the Murphy Salmon Jody Podcast
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