My Sliding Doors Moments

by TEJ | Nov 18, 2023 | Other Attempts at Humor

A scene from the film, Sliding Doors, with Gwyneth Paltrow. The film alternates between two storylines, one in which she barely makes the train, the other in which she misses it.

I’ve had two sliding doors moments in my life. One of them, quite random, initiated a chain of events that led me to my future wife. The other one literally saved my life. (Because sometimes people can’t tell when I’m making things up, let me assure you that all of the following is true.)

If you’ve never heard of the expression “a sliding doors” moment, it refers to a situation in which seemingly inconsequential moments nonetheless alter the trajectory of future events and a person’s destiny. The term entered our lexicon thanks to the 1998 movie, Sliding Doors, in which the film alternates between two storylines, showing two very different paths the central character’s life will take depending on whether she catches a train or just barely misses it (as the doors slide closed in front of her, hence the title). The difference is a split second of timing. The impact is life changing.

For me, the first one happened in November 1974, during my second year of college at the University of Virginia. My hometown is Albany, NY. But my father wanted a family Thanksgiving in Columbus, Ohio that year, since a couple of my siblings lived there, along with many other Jones clan relatives.

But I wanted to spend Thanksgiving in Albany, to visit my mom (my parents were divorced) and some high school cronies. My father went so far as to book my roundtrip airline reservations from Charlottesville, VA, to Columbus, changing planes at Dulles Airport outside of DC.

The sliding doors moment was my decision to disobey my father’s stern directive to fly to Columbus for the holiday. He was furious that I chose to ignore his command and fly home to Albany instead. This decision saved my life. That’s because the TWA return flight my father had booked me on after Thanksgiving, from Columbus to DC crashed, killing everyone on the flight. Had I obeyed my father’s orders, my life would have come to an abrupt end in a remote hillside in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, at the age of nineteen.

Top right: The actual New York Times front page headline. I was supposed to be on that plane. But I changed my mind.

The other sliding doors moment led me to my future wife. It was December 1982. I was living in Columbus, having just recently completed my graduate MBA program at Ohio State. I had no job prospects lined up. For several months I had resorted to waiting tables at a seafood restaurant just to cover my rent, while trying to find someone – ANYONE – who might be willing to interview me. My prospects appeared bleak.

I flew home to Albany for the holidays to visit my mom, my sister, and some friends. While there, I stopped by my father’s law office (he had passed away three years prior, but one of his partners continued the practice).

Just as I was leaving, heading for the elevator, a well-dressed older man was about to enter the office next door. One of the people in my father’s law office, a receptionist named Hazel, introduced me to this man. She casually shared that I was a recent MBA graduate and was looking for work. I exchanged banal pleasantries with this stranger, shook hands, and moments later, I got on the elevator, never giving our fleeting visit a second thought.

I flew home to Columbus to resume my flailing job search. The next day, I received a call from Hazel. “Tim, you’re never going to believe it, but remember that man I introduced you to in the hallway as you were waiting for the elevator? He wants to interview you for a job!”

What? Seriously? We had barely spent sixty seconds together in the hallway. He couldn’t know anything about me from that blip of an encounter. How could he possibly want to interview me? That random stranger turned out to be Terry McGuirk, the president of Knight Ridder Broadcasting, one of the largest chains of radio and TV stations in the country. He was a heavyweight in the industry. But why would he want to interview me for a job? I was unemployed and had no relevant work experience.

It turns out that he was looking to hire a full-time advertising sales rep for the local Albany Knight Ridder television station. And I guess I made enough of an impression that he wanted a closer look. He had no idea that I was not living in Albany. But I was not about to tell him that and blow this opportunity. So, I flew back to Albany two days later for the interview with Mr. McGuirk.

During our interview, this sixties-ish distinguished-looking executive had to take a phone call from one of his managers. The man on the other end of the line turned out to be someone named Al Gillen. Mr. McGuirk mentioned to Mr. Gillen that he had me in his office, and Mr. Gillen told him to say “hi” to me, like he knew me. Huh? Al Gillen knew who I was? I was totally confused.

After the call was over, Mr. McGuirk explained that this was the same Al Gillen who had been a client of my father’s many years ago when Al Gillen had been the president of a TV station in Flint, Michigan. (My father represented several TV and radio stations in his management law practice.)

Fast forward to December 1982. Al Gillen was now the president of Viewdata Corporation of America, a Knight Ridder subsidiary which was on the cusp of becoming the bleeding-edge forerunner to America Online (AOL) and a pioneer in online information technology that would eventually pave the way for the Internet. Terry McGuirk was Al’s boss.

I turned down Mr. McGuirk’s job offer to sell advertising for his Albany-based TV station. I didn’t want to move back to Albany. But I sent a letter to Al Gillen, asking for an interview for a position – heck, ANY position at Viewdata.

I never did get a chance to interview with Al Gillen. But he passed my resume on to one of his frontline managers, a nice man named Bennett. I flew down to Miami Beach, Florida, where Viewdata was based. Bennett and his manager, a woman named Jan, both interviewed me. The next day, they offered me a job as an account executive. Two months later I drove to Miami, with my pet rabbit Boose and my parakeet Bob in the back seat. An exhausting (not to mention smelly) 18-hour, 1,200 mile journey.

Little could I imagine that a chance encounter in a hallway with a total stranger that began with a handshake would start a chain of events that would lead me to my wife.

A week or so into my new job, I was sitting in the lunchroom. Across the table was an attractive redheaded woman with a vaguely foreign accent. I could not place it. She turned out to be from Canada. Little did I know at that moment that three years later I would ask this person to be my wife.

On that December afternoon in 1982 in Albany, had I left that office just 30 seconds sooner or just 30 seconds later, I never would have crossed paths with Terry McGuirk in the hallway. I would never have been sitting in his office at the precise moment he received that call from the president of Viewdata. And I never would have found myself sitting across the table in that Miami Beach lunchroom from my future wife.

[Author’s note: If you’ve had a sliding doors moment, share it in the comments section below or email me at timjones@viewfromthebleachers.net with your story.]

That’s the view from the bleachers. Perhaps I’m off base.

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