Fred the Accountant

[OutWest]

The way it was...


Once you spend a significant time outside the USA, you may realize you have been in brain jail most of your life.
You have been conditioned to think as you are told and to react as you are programed.
It is a prison, and most will die behind those bars. For those few who break out, the results can be very unpredictable.
I would say, breakout however you can, create a world for yourself on the outside and live in it. one should do this as if their
life depends on it, because in fact, it does.

Some men break out and fire off like a rocket gone wild- a dramatic lift off, an erratic course, and final explosion!
It's really hard to predict- what a man will do. It may be that a mild mannered accountant type transforms before your eyes
Free at last, thank God almighty, free at last! You think I exaggerate? Hardly. in fact I downplay the reality to make it believable
to the uninitiated. It seems that the first thing some may do, it to run free, burn some bridges behind them, and knock down some
walls. I have seen many a man crash and burn, break up into little pieces, with little smiles on every single piece.

Mild mannered Fred flew into Barranquilla, Columbia like a man on a mission- an accounting mission that is. Tepid, apologetic and
quite willing to apologize for things he never did. He was there to conduct and audit of a mining company with foreign partners.
Fred was to stay a while. Getting beneath the deceptions is important to accountants and auditors I hear...

I went up to David, Panama and did not return to Barranquilla for 4 months. My first morning back I got up early and stopped at my favorite
cafe for some coffee and pan dulce. At the other side of the cafe, already having breakfast was a gruff man, already well into breakfast, with a
local FB on his arm and a hat with an attitude. He finished breakfast, paid his tab, and strode out of the cafe with his chica, giving me a nod in Spanish as he walked by. It was Fred. He has busted out!

Yes, once you have done a Fred, it is just so hard to get the genie back in the bottle.


Outwest