Gregory Greenleaf

When I first came across the word "onboarding," I had to look it up. I thought it had something to do with getting on board a boat, but I was wrong. Instead, the word means to prepare a new employee to work in a company. Corporate America birthed this term into existence in the 1990s and, over time, it has replaced the word "orientation."

The first time it happened was in the fall of 1996, upon returning from our honeymoon in Quebec City and opening the door to our Bangor apartment.

Like yours, there is ample room in my head for inflation of my ego. And the quickest way to get a firm and plump ego — just at the tipping point of bursting — is to be labeled a prodigy.

DEFENSE ATTORNEY: Thank you, your honor. Members of the jury, you have heard the testimony and reviewed the evidence. You will shortly decide whether my client is guilty of three counts of over-accessorizing his bed by placing too many pillows on it.

Let's begin with a dream sequence that finds me sitting at a table in a restaurant in Venice, Italy. In my dream I speak fluent Italian.

I'm on findagrave.com, the site where you can, well, find a grave. The photo of the tombstone on my screen is gray and rather tall and narrow, like a nail clipper. OK, maybe that's a forced simile, but it fits this moment nicely.

"Do I have anything between my teeth?" Allison asks. She is preparing to go to the gym and has just eaten a poppy seed bagel for breakfast. I am sitting at the kitchen counter, also eating a poppy seed bagel. As I munch on my own bagel, she stands before me and gives me a radiant smile that allows me a good view of all her teeth.

Sometimes I look to the past for inspiration. Like here on Page 84 from the July 26, 1925, New York Times. The ad fills up more than three-quarters of the page and includes four photographs.

I am at an ice cream stand, one spot away from placing my order. Ahead of me a father of four little kids passes along a smorgasbord of ice cream orders that were, moments ago, passed along to him by a teenage boy who works behind the ice cream window. The father wisely pulls gobs and gobs of napkins from the napkin dispenser, then grabs his own shake and begins to walk away — but not before relaying to the teenager the following sincere message: "I appreciate you!"