In life, one must have rules. And like anyone else, I have mine.

They are too numerous to mention, but here are the top six:

1. I will never wait in line to get into a bar. There are too many other bars in the world to choose from. And it's one of those weird Catch-22s in life: The only time there is a line to get in a bar, the bar is one of those bars that's not worth waiting in line to go into.

2. I will never watch Oprah, or Dr. Phil, or Jerry Springer, or The View. Life is too short. And those people are too horrible.

3. I will never eat at a Chili's, a Bennigans, or a TGIFs. But it’s okay, if it is the only place in the airport to get a drink, to have a drink there. Every rule must have its exceptions.

4. I will never watch reality TV. It’s bad for the soul.

5. I will never root for the White Sox. If terrorists were to blow up Wrigley Field while the Cubs were playing there, and the only team left in Chicago to root for was the White Sox, I would be a Brewer’s fan.

6. I will never take part in a corporate “Team Building Event.”

Those are some of the more hard-line rules I live by. And I just broke one of them.

No, I didn’t have the deep-fried chili chicken buffalo wing boneless tender three-cheese nachos at Bennigans while watching Springer on the restaurant TV.

But I did participate in a corporate team building event. And . . . this is hard to write . . . I liked it. I completely failed at it, but I liked it.

Here’s the backstory:

I was in London, doing a seminar, sponsored by Ragan, with Marc Wright of Simply-Communicate. Marc is one of my favorite people in the world, and a wonderful host.

He picked me up at the airport and put me up in his English country estate for a night (because for what you pay for a hotel room in London for a night, you could buy a small bungalow on the south side of Chicago).

When I got to Wright Manor, after an all-night flight, his wife Bev had a wonderful English country breakfast waiting for me. Then Marc bundled me off to bed for a couple of hours. When I woke, he had the martinis already ready.

That is a host, people. Then we went to this beautiful little English country town called Marlow, which is right along the Thames, before we ducked into a 300-year-old pub for a pint or two of the local brew, before heading back to Wright Manor for Sunday dinner.

We did everything English but hunt foxes, shoot grouse, and murder someone in the drawing room.

I tell you all this to establish my mood. I was happy. I was agreeable. I was content. I was vulnerable. And then we did the seminar, which was a great success.

So I was even happier. I was even more agreeable. I was even more content. I was even more vulnerable.

And you have to remember, Marc Wright is very charming. And he has that wonderful British accent, which makes him even more charming. So he probably could have asked me to do anything, and I would have agreed.

Had he said to me:

"Mornin, governor! Fancy a bit of buggery, do you? What say we fiddle with the twigs and berries and then get a pint over at the Kensington Arms, what?"

I probably would have agreed. I might have regretted it later, but I would have agreed. I was that content. And that vulnerable.

So when Marc told me he had a surprise for me after Day One of the seminar, I agreed to it immediately.

“He’s probably going to introduce me to the Queen,” I remember thinking. “Or take me to Gordon Ramsey’s for dinner.” The possibilities were endless.

What he did, however, was shanghai me and drag me to a corporate team building event. The bastard! Had I known, I would have opted for the buggery.

Why was Marc, who is a smart sort of chap, going to one of these things? Because he owns several companies, and one of them is Simply Experience, which puts on big events for corporate clients. You know, like 400-person salespeople meetings, and such. Marc will do everything from writing the scripts for the presentations, to coming up with themes, to shooting the video. He’ll do it all.

Well, one company that he sometimes works with is called Catalyst. Catalyst is one of those crazy, funky companies run by young, creative types. They do corporate team building events, and Marc sometimes works with them.

They happened to be having a “party’ that night, and that’s the surprise Marc took me to. The bastard.

At first, it was great. Pretty people walked around with trays of beer, wine, champagne, and nibblies. I was still happy, content, and vulnerable.

But then it happened. The Team Building portion of the evening. Corporate buggery!

About 100 of us were herded into an auditorium where, on the stage, a complete symphony was set up—complete with all the instruments. An entire percussion section, all the strings, all the brass . . . everything.

The idea? According to our fearless leader, the conductor, we were each going to pick an instrument, and within 90 minutes, we would be playing a portion of a symphony together.

I almost pissed myself.

Anyone who knows me knows this: I have no musical talent. None. In fact, I am tone deaf. The last time I tried to something musical was in the fifth grade, when my parents made me play the trumpet.

And once, during rehearsal for a big show, the band leader—a sadistic Nazi if there ever was one—actually stopped the rehearsal, picked up the music book off the stand in front of him, and whipped it at my head.

“Crescenzo!” he shouted, in front of God and everyone. “If you’re not going to practice you don’t have to be here.”

But the thing was, I had been practicing. Really, really hard. I just sucked. Bad.

Here's more proof: Once, when I was about 13, my entire family was gathered around the dining room table with the lights out, singing happy birthday to my brother.

Suddenly, midway through the song, my grandmother got up, turned on the lights, and called a halt to the proceedings.

Looking at me, she said: “If you’re going to make a joke out of it, then you shouldn’t sing at all.”

She thought I was being lousy on purpose! But I wasn’t. I am completely and utterly tone deaf. I just don’t have that club in my bag.

So imagine, if you will, the terror coursing through my heart when they told me that, as part of a team building event, I was going to play an instrument. I was petrified.

Which instrument should I choose? The trumpet was obviously out. Too much baggage. The strings? Ha! Not a freaking chance. Anything that called for multiple fingers doing multiple things was out of the question.

That also eliminated all the reeds and woodwinds.

Trombones? Snare drums? No and no. Was there a triangle I could hit, or some maraca shaky type things? What the hell was I going to do??????

And then I saw it: a thing of beauty, sitting in the back row, calling out to me like a beacon in the night. A big, round bass drum. Like you see in the marching bands.

"I could hit a drum like that," I remember thinking. "I could hit the shit out of a drum like that."

But there were only two of them. I looked around, and I immediately saw seven or eight other guys eyeing my bass drum.

“Teamwork my fat hairless ass,” I remember thinking. “I am getting a bass drum, even if I have to break one of these Brit's ankles to do it.”

This was the Revolutionary War all over again. It was Paul Revere's midnight ride, or Washington crossing the Delaware.

We may have been in the heart of London, but my heart was back at Bunker Hill.

I was ready for war. These modern-day Redcoats didn't stand a chance.

And then the conductor gave the word. Gentlemen and ladies, go choose your instruments. And the race was on.

In my next post, I’ll tell you whether I got the drum, and how the rest of the evening turned out. One hint: it wasn’t pretty.

So . . . I got the bass drum.

(For those of you reading this blog for the first time, please see the item below this one, if you want to know what I’m talking about).

About seven other guys, I think, were going for the two bass drums, but desperation honed my senses, and gave me the edge I needed to beat them.

When the conductor said the word and we were free to go get our instruments, most of the people waded directly into the sea of chairs, brass, and strings. It was a human traffic jam.

Not me. I looped around, went the long way, got to the back row of the orchestra, and had a clear aisle all the way to the bass drums. I was already there, smiling, while the other would-be drummers tried to get clear of the crowds.

Step One: Get the bass drum. Mission Accomplished.

Step Two: Learn how to either a) play it; or b) fake playing it, so as to not call attention to myself.

After a brief pep talk by the conductor, the different groups were split up into our breakout sessions, so we could get small-group tutoring and learn to play our sections of the piece. Then, we’d all gather back together to play as a group.

So, I had to lug my new bass drum off the stage, down a hallway, and into a room with the other percussionists. Within three minutes of our lesson, I was lost.

There was music to read, but I couldn’t read it.

There was a fairly simple beat to follow, but I couldn’t follow it. I was back in the fifth grade again, about to be humiliated once more.

I had just made up my mind to fake the whole thing and never actually hit the drum during the performance, when an angel found me.

I have already forgotten his name, but he was the other bass drummer. He was English, and very nice. And handsome. He looked over, saw that I was struggling, and saved my life.

He obviously had some kind of music background, because he really knew what he was doing. And he became my private tutor. He showed me when, where, and how to hit the drum. He showed me how to lean against it with my leg, to stop it suddenly.

“This is what teamwork is all about,” I remember thinking. “Maybe there is something to this corporate teambuilding stuff. I really like this guy. Maybe we can have a pint afterwards, what?”

And then it was show time. We carried our drums back up, and set up for the show. Because of my new buddy and teammate, I was confident.

“I’ll keep on eye on you, mate,” he said to me. I almost hugged him. In fact, I think I did hug him.

We had to do two full rehearsals before our official “symphony.” The first one was sloppy, but better than I thought it would be.

The second rehearsal was when disaster struck, and I found out something about myself that I’ll have to live with for the rest of my life.

First, you need to know how the symphony we were performing ends. It ends with the entire percussion section doing a dramatic drum roll, with the two bass drummers leaning over and banging away furiously on the right side of their drums.

Then, on a signal from the conductor, we stop. And we do a hard stop, by lifting our right legs up and leaning them into the drums, so that the sound stops immediately, without any echo.

I was ready. I was coached. I was only slightly tipsy. This was my time. I was going to make up for all those horrible trumpet lessons and other painful memories of my childhood.

The piece started. I was flawless . . . but only because of my bass drum buddy. He coached me the entire time. “Now!” he would say, when we were supposed to come in. “Two hits break, two hits break,” he would say, during the “two hits, break” section.

He basically walked me all the way through the piece, until the end. Now, it was time for the drum roll. My wing man looked at me. “Ready?” he said. I nodded. God damn right I was ready. I was Maverick, and he was Goose. Let's do this thing, I remember thinking.

“Now!” he shouted, and in perfect synch we started hitting those glorious drums. We were driving the symphony. I wasn’t on a stage with 150 other fakers and tin ears. I was driving the London Philharmonic.

I was so wrapped up in my own excellence, in fact, that I forgot to stop my drum roll. As I said earlier, it was supposed to be a hard stop, which you achieve by lifting your right leg up and pressing it to the drum.

I didn’t do that. And so, three seconds after everybody else had stopped playing, you could still hear my drum. It was as if a hush had fallen over the crowd, and some big fat slob had farted.

At that point, even though it was too late, I tried to stop the reverberation. I hoisted my leg up to the drum, and tried to press it against it. I couldn’t even do that right. My leg kept slipping off.

And then I looked up. Everyone in the symphony had turned around, and was looking at me as I tried to hump my drum.

Well . . . they weren’t looking at me. They were looking at us. At my new partner and me, together. They didn’t know who had screwed up . . . just that it was one of us.

And that’s when it happened.

“It was him!” I shouted, pointing my drumstick at my new buddy.

That’s right, under intense pressure, I folded. This was supposed to be an exercise in teamwork, and the first chance I got, I threw my new Brit buddy under the bus.

This was a man who had helped me. He was the perfect teammate. He represented everything that a teammate should be. He completed me.

And I screwed him.

And you know what? He still helped me. For the final round, the actual performance, he still gave me my cues. What a man. What a wing man. And what a scuzbag I am.

And of course you know what I did for the actual performance. During the final section, the drum roll, the best part of the piece, I barely hit my drum, and I made damn sure I did a hard stop about six seconds before I was supposed to, so that I wouldn’t screw it up.

And my new buddy? He left without saying goodbye.

Now I know why I work for myself. I’m simply not fit to work with other people.

You can actually see a video of part of the performance here. I'm the constipated-looking guy in the back.

Warning: Longish, somewhat sappy post ahead. Read at your own risk.

When you do corporate communications for a living, you learn to bitch a lot. You bitch about approval processes and designers and executives who think they can write and lawyers who think they are Gods and employees who won’t read and IT people who won’t return your calls and lots of other bitch-worthy things.

And when you’re a corporate communications consultant, as I am, you get even better at bitching. Because you have more to bitch about.

You bitch about all of the above but also clients who don’t take your advice and all the travel you have to do and lousy hotels and the crooked cab drivers and the jerks in the airports and the people who take 120 days to pay your lousy $2,000 invoice and on and on and piss and moan.

So I bitch more than most people . . . and much of that is done on this blog, which is like therapy for me.

But lately, I’ve actually been thinking about how lucky I am, and how much I have to give thanks for.

There’s all the regular stuff, of course. I have the perfect son, Zach, who is everything you would want a kid to be. Every parent should be lucky enough to have a Zach.

And I have the perfect wife, Cindy, who as far as I’m concerned is the standard by which all other people should be judged.

Hell, I even have the perfect ex-wife, Tracey. I think I get along with her better than many people get along with their current wives.

My life is pretty damned good, on the family level.

But that’s not what I’ve been thankful about lately. I’ve been thankful for the people I get to work with, as a seminar leader and as a consultant.

The past two months have been the busiest of my career. I've been on a professional death march to Washington, DC, Colorado, Dallas, Edmonton, St. Louis, London, and San Francisco. On top of that, I’ve had two conferences here in Chicago sandwiched in between.

It's been a blur of airports, hotels, cabs, airport bars, and hotel bars.

And I’ve bitched the entire time, loudly and to anyone who would listen.

But now that I’m done, and have had this week to relax and cook and think about stuff, I realize how lucky I am. Here’s a short recap of the two months:

The marathon started with a trip to DC, to teach Advance Writing and Editing, with Jim Ylisela. Jim is the guy who married me and Cindy. We got drunk one night, went on the internet, got him officially sanctioned by the Universal Life Church of the Holy High God Apostle, or some such group, and he was able to marry us.

He’s a terrific guy . . . and I love teaching with him. It’s almost like it’s not work, but play. Only I get paid for it. And the DC crowd was terrific. How lucky is that, to be able to teach with someone you love, to a crowd that really gets into it?

The death march then came back to Chicago, to a company called Textron. They were having their annual communicator’s conference, and invited me to come in and give a session.

But that’s not all they invited me to. They also invited me to a Cubs game the night before the event! And . . . they offered me an extra ticket, so I could bring my son.

Those are the kind of people I get to work with. The guy who hired me, Tom, showed up for the game wearing a bandanna like a pirate, and him and I drank beers the entire night and watched the Cubs win.

The game was great, the people were fantastic, the event was a hit, and I made a little money. What’s there to bitch about, right?

Then, it was time for Ragan’s Social Media Conference, where I did a pre-conference session with my wife, Cindy, on podcasting. How lucky is that, to be able to present a session with your wife? It was like teaching with Jim, only I could have sex afterwards! What could be better?

Then it was on to AWE in Boulder, where Jim and I had another great class, and an exquisite, romantic dinner at a place up in the mountains, called The Flagstaff House. If you’ve never been there, and you get a chance to go to Boulder, you must go.

The bar is a cozy nook that serves Boodles gin, the food is terrific, and the view is unreal. Jim and I sat there like a couple of lovers, eating oysters, drinking martinis, and gazing down upon the twinkling lights of Boulder.

Then it was down to Dallas, where I got to hang out with Tonda, Katie, Steve, and the rest of the crew from Southwest Airlines at the Communication Roundup conference. Not only some of the smartest and most creative people in the business, but also probably the nicest. What’s not to like about that?

Then, it was up to Edmonton, where I spent a week training the employees of the government of Alberta. While this may have been the hardest thing I’ve ever done, it was also the most rewarding.

Spending a week at one organization, you really feel like you can make a difference. And I think I did. And the people where so great. On my last day, one of the women who brought me in, Carol, gave me three things:

1. Homemade chocolate that her husband made;
2. A beautiful Thank You card;
3. A card to give to my son, Zach. It read: “Zach: Thanks for sharing your dad with us. He's really smart, and we learned a lot from him.”

That one made me weep. Nobody’s ever done that before. And after not seeing Zach for six days, it was so cool to be able to hand him that card, and watch his face as he read it.

Of course, he liked the chocolate better. He may be perfect, but he’s still only eight.

Then it was down to St. Louis, to speak at a Catholic health organization. Again, I was invited out to a wonderful dinner the night before, where I got to make some great new friends.

The next day, at the seminar, they started the proceedings with a prayer. Now, that was a first for me. And it made me a little nervous. My speaking style, as well as the stories I tell, are in direct conflict with all of the major religions of the world.

But I had nothing to worry about. In fact, it may have been the most fun I’ve ever had teaching. It was a rollicking four hours, with everyone laughing and getting into it. When a seminar is going really, really well, it becomes almost like a one-man show, complete with improvisational humor and audience participation. This was like that.

And midway through, Suzy, the woman who brought me in, came up to me and said: “I’m going to get the boss. He needs to hear this.”

So she did, and the Big Guy came in for the rest of the day and listened. Again, I got the feeling that maybe, just maybe, I made a difference.

Then it was off to London, where Marc and Bev Wright put me up in their English Country Manor Estate. But you know all about that from previous posts.

The death march then turned to San Francisco, where Jim and I had yet another perfect crowd for AWE, with about 30 people joining us in the bar at the top of the Hyatt, overlooking San Francisco. How perfect is that?

Finally, it all ended in Chicago, at the first-ever meeting of the Ragan Fellowship, where I got to spend an amazing, intense three days with a dozen senior communicators. I'm going to write more about the Fellowship later, but suffice to say that it may have been the most rewarding three days I've ever spent, professionally.

Looking back, there wasn’t a bad experience in the marathon. I’ve already forgotten about the shitty airport martinis and the bad hotel room service and the assholes with the dingleberry dildos sticking out of their ears talking to themselves.

I only remember the people. And they were magnificent. All of them.

Thanksgiving is my holiday. My son and I will cook all night tonight; we’ll have a fire roaring for three days straight; tomorrow my entire family will come to my house for the feast; we'll go through a case or two of wine.

And this year, like every other year, I’ll have a lot to be thankful for. And that includes the people I’ve taught, the people I’ve had the pleasure of working with, and the people who read and post on this blog.

Thanks for taking the time to read my therapy occasionally, and to comment on it once in a while.

Have a great Thanksgiving.

Anyone who reads this blog knows that I’m no fan of the “Bluetooth”—those little flashing dildos that people wear in their ears so they can talk on the phone no matter what else they are doing.

I’ve seen people chatting into their dildos while they urinate in a public bathroom; they talk into them while they’re standing in line ordering food at the airport; they sit at bars and talk to their dildos. They talk into them on planes, until the last possible minute they can, until the flight attendant makes them shut their dildos down.

There are a million and one reasons to hate the Bluetooths . . . and I just discovered another one.

The Bluetooth and other hands-free phone devices have eliminated one of the things I used to really enjoy in life: talking to cab drivers.

I’m not kidding . . . I used to love talking to cabbies. In my home city of Chicago, on the road . . . wherever I was, when I got in a cab I almost always started a conversation.

In Chicago, once in a while you’d actually get a driver from Chicago! That person would know so much about the neighborhoods and how things have changed, it was like getting a history lesson on my own city.

But more often than not, the Chicago cab driver would be from a place far, far away. Like the Sudan. Or Ethiopia. Or Pakistan. Or India.

And they would be even more interesting. I’d grill them on their cultures, why they came here, what life was like back at home, whether or not they still had family there. I’d ask about how people in their country view America; I’d ask how they, personally, view Americans.

I used to learn so much. Now? Nothing.

Every single cab I get in now, the driver has either a dildo in his ear, or a long wire snaking from his ear down to the seat. And they are always on the phone, usually speaking a foreign language that I can’t understand.

And of course I always think they are talking to me! Here's how it works:

Me: Hi. 111 East Wacker, please.

Cab Driver: Mufassa hachem ali baba jihad hummus.

Me: I'm sorry?

Cab Driver: Falafel machmed allah babaganoush.

Me: Are you talking to me?

Cab Driver: Mezze tabouleh mohammed al jazeera kibbeh.

At this point, I lean over and look, and see the dildo. And I finally realize that he's not talking to me. He's talking to the dildo, either ordering lunch or planning to blow up the Sears Tower.

Cab rides used to be educational experiences. Now, they’re lonely exercises in frustration.

I just took cabs to and from Ragan Communications. Twelve bucks each way. Both drivers had Bluetooths. Both spoke a foreign language. Both chattered non-stop into their ear dildos. And I couldn’t understand a word.

Without the Blueteeth, I might have learned something about the world. Now, because of the ear dildos, we’re all in our own little worlds, talking to people that only we know are there.