blogomax

Now that Steve has left Apple, everyone is piping up with their Steve stories. Here’s the best of mine.

This one is from maybe 2003 or so. At that time, I was working for Steve’s Other Company. For those who’ve been lucky enough to visit, you know that there’s a rose garden in front of the building. For those of you who haven’t been so lucky as to visit, there’s a rose garden in front of the building. Amazing place, to not do it enough justice.

In the summer, particularly, the rose garden was spectacular – fragrant and beautiful. The roses often made me slow my progress into the building – I almost always went in through the front door, even though there were employee entrances closer to parking, transit, etc., because then my day would start with the beauty of the flowers, followed by the grandeur of the famous cathedral-like central atrium – getting me jazzed all over again at my luck to be able to work at such a place, and excited to start my day.

For a couple of years, my daughter spent part of her summer at a gymnastics camp, right behind Pixar. She’d ride into work with me, and we’d always go through the building – past the roses, through the atrium – so she, too, could bask in the amazingness of it all.

Being a kid, she’d literally stop and smell the roses. I always found this charming, naturally. Sure, proud papa and all that, but really, who wouldn’t find a cute little girl, particularly one who bore a rather striking resemblance to an important character, smelling the roses, to be utterly charming?

The “confrontational” Mr. Jobs, you might guess.

Nope.

One fine summer morning, making my way in to work with my daughter, I found myself right where I expected to be – standing on the walkway, enjoying the morning sun, and particularly the sight of her rapturously flitting, butterfly-like, from plant to plant, smelling the roses. It’s goddamned cute, is what it is, not to mention being the purest, life-affirmingest embodiment of the tired, old expression.

Thinking back, it was probably a Friday, because in those days, that’s when you could usually count on Steve being around. Sure enough, in the midst of my daughter’s revelry, along came Steve. Vital, driven, pre-illness Steve. Bouncy-step. Jeans. Turtleneck. The whole package.

He stopped.

Not to smell the roses himself, but to stand and watch my daughter do so, just as I was doing. A big smile came across his face. “Your daughter?” he asked me. “Does she come often?” I explained about the gymnastics camp, and that we got to have lunch together at Pixar – a treat for us both. “She really loves it here” I said, adding “So do I.” Steve smiled at me, said “good” and continued on into the building.

That’s it.

It’s the proverbial “how much money did it cost for Steve to be delayed” story. I don’t know the answer to that, and don’t really care all that much, really. What struck me was the simple humanity of it. It made me want to be Steve’s friend.

I’m not sure if I’m supposed to start thinking that I work for Tim Cook now. We’ll see how that goes, but from my time at Pixar, and now at Apple, I’ve always been proud to work for Steve. I wish him the best of luck in this new phase of his life. Hopefully he has time to do some rose-smelling himself.