From the Editor’s Desk: More Stories (Premium)

I collect little stories so I can add them to bigger pieces I'm writing where appropriate. But here are two that never found a home, plus a third one that just came up. No, none of them are related in any way.

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I can’t recall if I ever told this story, so apologies if I have. But Mary Jo and I had drinks with Terry Myerson after he had announced that he was leaving Microsoft, and I finally asked him a question that had been bugging me, to that point, for over a year: how had he lost so much weight?

Terry told us that just as he had assumed the Windows lead role at Microsoft, he had to visit Finland and some places in Europe to welcome Nokia’s employees into the fold, but he had been given some bad news by Satya Nadella: Microsoft was already taking steps to kill Windows Phone, and most of those new employees would soon be scrambling to find new roles, many outside of Microsoft, as most of them were going to be laid off. So Terry met with an endless parade of people on the trip, all excited for their new roles at Microsoft, and unaware of how quickly it would all come crashing down.

But Terry did as he was told, returned to Seattle, and then helped dismantle the Windows Phone business over the next several months. He was consumed by stress the entire time, knowing how many lives were upended by this decision, and when the dust finally settled, Terry, who I never considered overweight, had lost weight. A lot of weight.

“Come on, Terry,” I responded. “I can’t lay off tens of thousands of Nokia employees. Surely you have some other advice?”

"Just eat less and exercise more," he told me, as I burst out laughing. Useful! (OK, he also mentioned that he started doing all in-person meetings as walks around Microsoft's campus, which I assume some people found irritating.)

I miss that guy.

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My cousin Michael is about ten years older than I am, and he lived outside of New Orleans for much of his adult life, and so I'd visit him and his family when I was in town for Microsoft conferences. Once, we were skiing with my father up in Durango, Colorado, and he told me about a time he was driving home from New Orleans across Lake Pontchartrain, speeding in his classic Trans Am. A cop hiding in a side area somewhere on the long bridge flashed the lights and pulled him over.

"Do you have any idea how fast you were going?" the officer asked him when he approached the car.

No, Michael apologized: he had gone to the doctor that day and found out he had testicular cancer. And he'd been wandering around in a daze ever since. He was just messed up inside.

"Son," the cop said, "no one should have to go through what you're going through. But please, just slow it down." He then left without giving him a ticket.

"Michael, I had no idea you went through that," I said. "Are you OK?"

He burst out laughing. "I've never had testicular cancer."
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