By Tim Hayes Some of the greatest business partnerships in history blended the considerable talents of each founder to create something even stronger, better, and more appealing to customers. After candle maker William Procter and soap maker James Gamble married the sisters of the same family, their new father-in-law in 1837 suggested they work together. […]

By Tim Hayes A conversation overheard on Broadway earlier this week… “Will ya look at dat, Frank?” “Whassat, Jerry?” “Look! Look around! Can you believe dis?” “I still ain’t followin’ ya, Jer.” “It’s five-a-clock in the aftanoon, we’re standin’ here in the middle’a Times Square, and we ain’t been hassled once all day!” “Why is […]

By Tim Hayes Eight years of Catholic elementary education sure served me well as a young lad. That’s not to say my little parochial school didn’t need to do some breakneck, heavy-handed, guilt-sodden fundraising on a regular basis, however. Because, trust me on this, we certainly did. It started with the annual Bazaar, a major […]

By Tim Hayes Okay, so here we all find ourselves, smack in the middle of a global crap storm. Everyone called on to share the burden, the inconvenience, the frustration, the anxiety, and for far too many, the pain and suffering and loss. And then, of course, entering stage left – the assholes, idiots, and […]

By Tim Hayes What if, at some point today, every inhabitant of planet Earth froze in place, looked up to the sky, and listened intently to a booming, sonorous baritone ringing down at us from the depths of space: “APRIL FOOLS! I just wanted to get your attention, Kids! Ha, ha! Everything will be back […]

By Tim Hayes Jarring transformations make us sit up and take notice. You look around and nothing looks recognizable anymore. Scary, exciting, confusing, adrenaline-pumping. We see it in superhero movies all the time. A cosmic mishap or a super serum or a surge of radiation or the arrival of a denser molecular alien among us. […]

By Tim Hayes During my senior year in college, many (MANY) moons ago, my roommate and I lived in an apartment with bunk beds, a couch, a TV, an Atari game console, a bathroom, and a kitchen with a sink, stove, and oven. I took the top bunk, we played a lot of “Pong” on […]

By Tim Hayes Remember “Bambi?” All anybody wants to talk about is his mother getting shot by hunters, and that’s surely a very sad element of the story. But there’s another part of the movie I always found fascinating. It parallels Bambi’s own trajectory, from naïve waif to majestic adult stag, after enduring the tragic […]

By Tim Hayes There’s some kind of bug out there, have you heard? Sorta contagious, I believe. There’s no traffic on the road, yet somebody bought all the meat from the supermarket. What the hell is going on? As most right-thinking people do, I went straight to Twitter for the REAL story. Nothing but straight, […]

By Tim Hayes Years ago, as each of the kids learned to drive, we shared some thrilling experiences together, as most parents and their offspring do. One evening, after a maiden solo voyage with the car, our young driver came home clutching a torn sheet of paper, which read in angry scribble: LEARN HOW TO […]

By Tim Hayes High on my list of favorite movies sits one that most people never heard of. It features three elements of a film that appeal to me most – it’s set in Pittsburgh, it stars Sylvester Stallone, and it’s funny as hell. It’s called “Grudge Match,” and tells the story of two senior-citizen […]

By Tim Hayes One’s an unrepentant socialist, the other’s a reprehensible billionaire. One’s a smug know-it-all, the other’s a shrill know-it-all. One’s a stumblebum old man who’s losing his marbles, the other’s a one-note wonder who doesn’t know when to exit the stage. Listen, they’ll tell you all about what’s wrong with their opponents. And […]

By Tim Hayes It’s been said in the business world that the most troublesome — yet potentially game-changing – variable in any organization comes in the form of people. The hiring process, when you get down to the nub of it, can be a tremendous gamble. You may get lucky and hire the perfect candidate, […]

By Tim Hayes Thirteen is a tough age. You’re still figuring out where you stand on the chessboard of popularity. Who’s in, who’s out, who’s knocking on the door. The steamy, sticky ooze of peer pressure seeps into your consciousness, setting up housekeeping in your brain, until you evict it somewhere after high school graduation. […]

By Tim Hayes As my consciousness burst forth from what had been a sound sleep, I could tell I had somehow become airborne. Or, perhaps more appropriately, earthbound. Twisting like an Olympic diver, I saw the nightstand whiz by. After my jaw had smacked off and been scraped by the sharp metal corner of it, […]

By Tim Hayes Making a living as a self-employed entrepreneur has its advantages. Freedom, variety, exciting engagements, continually keeping abject terror at bay, to name just a few. But ranking near the top, for me anyway, comes the dress code. When with clients, of course, it’s business appropriate. But when working from my home office, […]

We said goodbye to my mother-in-law this week. What follows is my eulogy, a tribute to someone who – despite wearing “rose-colored glasses” – was not naïve. She was optimistically realistic, always seeing the good in people and situations, making her so easy to love. Rest in peace, Mom. Glasses, Tinted Rose From the hills […]

By Tim Hayes Our eldest daughter, an accomplished professional woman now, with two bachelor’s and two master’s degrees, celebrated a birthday this past week. Our pride in all she has done and become has no bounds. This story occurs some years ago, when she was a lot smaller and the world seemed a lot simpler. […]

By Tim Hayes Nothing felt right that Christmas Eve, and it had put me in a bad mood. I followed my parents, sisters, and grandmother into church for Midnight Mass, only to find that “our” pew – the one we had populated for years – had been usurped by a bunch of “twice-a-year” Catholics.  So […]

By Tim Hayes Anyone who writes for a living has been there. You’ve done the interviews, you’ve collected the information through research, the “reporting” part of the job has finished. Now comes the second act. Reading through all those notes and printouts and scribbles on one side of your desk, and glancing hesitantly at the […]

By Tim Hayes Of all the things I miss about Thanksgivings spent as a kid, few can be felt more keenly than going to my Aunt’s house with her family and mine sharing the bounteous feast together. First off, I loved this Aunt. She was naturally funny, warm, expressive, and embracing. I always felt happy […]

By Tim Hayes Imagine being part of a sea of 2,500-plus dancing, shouting, singing revelers as the huge windup of the Beatles’ “Twist and Shout” builds…Ahhhh, ahhhh, ahhhh, ahhhhh, WAAAAAAAA!!!…Shake it up baby! Twist and Shout!” Any guesses where this happened? At one of those knock-off Beatles tribute band concerts? Nope. On the streets of […]

By Tim Hayes My Uncle Jim was a bear of a guy, a man’s man, and it was impossible not to like him. He and my Aunt had three daughters, and since my Mom and Aunt were sisters, our family spent a lot of time at their house, and vice versa.  I loved them all, […]

By Tim Hayes We upgraded our cable TV service not too long ago, opening up expansive (and expensive) new vistas of options to waste time vegetating on the sofa. Indulging in one such stretch the other day, I discovered the “Buzzr” network, where they show old game shows. Clicking on something called “Blockbusters,” I settled […]

By Tim Hayes The evening prior to leading a day-long intense training and coaching program with about 60 managers of a global manufacturing company, a participant joined our table at dinner and struck up a conversation. This person was very much looking forward to hearing new thoughts and approaches to developing material to be presented […]

By Tim Hayes “’What do we do now?’ “Go back and watch any movie and you will see this line over and over again. And I dread reading scripts that have no women involved in their creation because inevitably I get to that part where the girl turns to the guy and she goes, ‘What […]

By Tim Hayes So often in sports, especially football, during the post-game news conference a coach will lament a team’s loss by attributing it to not “finishing plays” – meaning that players failed to sustain their intensity and focus for the second longer it takes to make a tough catch, or tackle a speedy receiver, […]

By Tim Hayes Got a haircut the other day. For the past couple of years, as the clippings fall from my head onto the black cape, it jars me to look at the collection of snipped follicles collecting on my lap. Apparently, I’ve been turning steadily more gray with every turn in the stylist’s chair. […]

By Tim Hayes “The event is being held on floors three and four, Sir,” said the trim fellow holding the door open for me the other evening. Three and four? What did that mean? I followed the other attendees to the elevator and we all stepped off on the third floor, where the obligatory hors […]

By Tim Hayes For as long as we’ve lived in this neighborhood and its extended environs, we’ve seen him. Sweating in the summer, huffing in the winter, but always there. Like the tides, regular, predictable, a steady presence in an otherwise turbulent and chaotic world. Running. Down the steep quarter-mile roadway to the closest main […]

By Tim Hayes “Hayes, come and see me after school today – there’s a question I have for you,” said our high school band director. “Okay, Mr. B,” I replied, wondering whether I’d done something that would land me in trouble. Turned out not to be trouble, exactly. Only troubling. Later that day, in the […]

By Tim Hayes Driving out of our cul-de-sac the other morning, I spied a cluster of little kids, backpacks slung, faces eager and a little anxious, surrounded by moms looking every bit as nervous and excited. It’s been a few years since our little neighborhood has had that many young children, so the corner bus […]

By Tim Hayes Oh, the things we do for love, as the ‘70s pop band 10cc once sang. If only this story were about 10cc. Alas, it is not. This particular tale revolves around another band from that same era, Molly Hatchet. The mere mention of that name still sends shivers. Allow me to explain. […]

By Tim Hayes Some 25 years ago, the diagnosis first came down. Type 2 diabetes. Not really knowing all that the news would entail, life moved on. A new doctor added to the mix, some advice about diet and exercise, blood tests every few months. Not a huge imposition or swing to a radical alteration […]

By Tim Hayes On a rainy weekday lunch period in May, my friend Ken sat across the cafeteria table in our high school as we talked about moving on to college and whatever came after that. Ken liked math. He was good at it, and would go on to major in business and accounting. He […]

By Tim Hayes At the age of nine, the lesson came home to me in a very real way. Courtesy of the Golden Ruler. And that’s not a typo. Although I suppose the Golden Rule could factor into the story, if you really want to stretch things. No, I mean the Golden Ruler. As in […]

By Tim Hayes After celebrating 37 of them, we have come to appreciate every wedding anniversary for the wonderful observance it represents, even as the details of one year’s celebration to the next have taken on vastly different directions and colors along the way. We’ve spent days luxuriating at mountaintop resorts. We’ve spent quiet evenings […]

By Tim Hayes About three days before the wedding, when I was already living in our apartment in Indiana, PA, while my wife-to-be was still living in Pittsburgh, the phone rang after I got home from work, my sister on the other end. “Promise you won’t be mad?” she asked rather sheepishly, knowing how my […]

By Tim Hayes The well-spoken, erudite, respected U.S. Senator from New York, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, uttered a few memorable sentences during his years serving under the Capitol Dome. But, as a one-time professional and ever-in-my-heart journalist, one of my favorite Moynihan-isms remained this gem: “You are entitled to your opinion. But you are not entitled […]

By Tim Hayes The neighborhood kids thought nothing of walking up the hill to the main drag of our little borough, climbing on a bus or trolley into Downtown, walking around the streets and hitting the big department stores and sporting goods shops and pizza places. Just another way to kill time on a summer […]

By Tim Hayes Family legend has it, as my father got the word while in the waiting room at the hospital — because dads didn’t get to go in the delivery room back then — that a son had been born, he did what Hayes men have done down through the generations. He passed out […]

By Tim Hayes In the silly, funny, harmless, but otherwise forgettable 2001 Disney film, “Max Keeble’s Big Move,” the school bully, Troy McGinty, is regularly – and hilariously – laid low, quivering in fear and tears, at the sight of a TV-character frog named “McGoogle.” Don’t ask. When he’s not throwing smaller kids into lockers, […]

By Tim Hayes Among the back pages of a magazine many years ago, shortly after the end of the Vietnam War, a small ad caught my eye: “P.O.W. Bracelets Available. Let them know you haven’t forgotten them.” For a nominal fee, I sent in the form and a few weeks later, received my Prisoner of […]

By Tim Hayes During a coffee shop conversation with a young student from my college alma mater the other day, I heard him say something that made me pause a second. “I think if you’re a decent person who works hard, you’ll do pretty well,” he said. It gave me pause not because I didn’t […]

By Tim Hayes “My mother was the most beautiful woman I ever saw. I attribute all my success in life to the moral, intellectual and physical education I received from her.” – George Washington The Father of Our Country knew how important his mother was to his bearing, his success, his life. And if good old […]

By Tim Hayes Who’s ready for a pop quiz?  Here goes… Would you hand the keys to a brand-new Lamborghini to a 16-year-old kid with a learner’s permit? Would you offer a multi-million dollar NHL contract to a person who’s never been on ice skates? Would you pay $200 for a ticket to a Broadway […]

By Tim Hayes Well, I hear tonight’s the big night.  “Game of Thrones” begins its final season on HBO, and we’re all expected to go completely ga-ga at the news, I guess. In the seven-year history of the program, it only caught my eye when the dragons appeared.  Otherwise, the appeal somehow never struck a […]

By Tim Hayes The woman stepped cautiously into the oncologist’s office, accompanied by her daughter. The elderly patient, lightweight and frail, knew this was going to be an important discussion.  She also knew she might not remember all of the details accurately later, so thank God her daughter – her advocate and protector – would […]

By Tim Hayes Of the three bands at my high school, Marching Band was the most fun, Concert Band the most challenging, and Stage Band by far the coolest. Playing drums in Stage Band opened up all sorts of possibilities.  We played jazz charts, meaning that different performers got to take extended solos – including […]

By Tim Hayes “He went through a brief Egyptian Period that baffled me – he tried to walk flat a great deal, sticking one arm in front of him and one in back of him, putting one foot behind the other.  He declared Egyptians walked that way; I said if they did I didn’t see […]

By Tim Hayes About a decade ago, give or take, my parents moved from a single-family home into an apartment.  In the process, they downsized considerably, ridding the house of extraneous stuff, whittling down their wardrobes, holding garage sales, and shuffling whatever they could to my two sisters and me. Visits to their apartment – […]

By Tim Hayes Once upon a time, many, many years ago, a man and a woman were given a son.  This little boy had very unusual qualities.  He called himself a prince.  He asked for a new mirror every Christmas and birthday.  He liked to tell his brothers and sisters and the children in his […]

By Tim Hayes “My battery is low and it’s getting dark.” Such came the final message from Opportunity, the amazing little engine that could, after roaming around the surface of Mars for the past 15 years, sending images back to NASA all that time from the Red Planet. A ferocious dust storm finally did Opportunity […]

By Tim Hayes After finally finding a garage with open spaces in Downtown Pittsburgh the other day, I dodged raindrops for the four-block walk to my next client appointment.  Fold-up umbrella in my hand, the sporadic drizzle didn’t warrant opening the thing up and carrying it all that distance. But it got me thinking about […]

By Tim Hayes It could have been a school board director, a township commissioner, or a borough council president yammering on.  Some weeks it was all three.  Regardless of the elected body, though, there I sat, notebook and printed agenda in hand, pen rapidly scratching notes as the debate wore on. Living the life of […]

By Tim Hayes While lazily flipping through the channels late one evening, I stumbled onto one of those half-hour pitches for music CDs, this batch featuring songs from the ‘60s.  Staring with mildly scandalized expressions at the hairstyles and fashions shown on grainy old Ed Sullivan clips, I saw tune after tune scroll up the […]

By Tim Hayes So after a three-month hiatus, I resumed private boxing lessons last week – this time with a new trainer, since my old one had moved away – and quickly discovered how different this guy’s approach would be. “Okay, on your belly,” he commanded.  “Now, push up on your hands, keep your arms […]

By Tim Hayes It started bubbling up, right on cue, as I knew it would. As soon as Mary throws open the front door and waves in half the town, with scatterbrained Uncle Billy carrying a large laundry basket full of bills and coins, dumping it onto the dining room table – I can feel […]

By Tim Hayes Personal and professional obligations led me to drive past my high school this weekend – a welcome detour, since one week ago I attended my 40th Class Reunion from that very institution, and had an absolute blast. In one more piece of evidence that my brain has a mind of its own, […]

By Tim Hayes The alarm went off at 5:15 a.m.  Rarely a pleasant or welcome sign.  But this day, I let it slide.  This day, I had work to do.  A mission to fulfill. I lumbered out of bed, crawled into the shower, let the hot water and foamy sudsy soap spur the brain cells […]

By Tim Hayes Finally, silence. All of the hum-and-rattle, after all of the doomsday warnings of looming cataclysm, after all of the noise and misdirection carried into our living rooms and car radios by an unending onslaught of ridiculously logic-free commercials – it’s all over.  Finally. It’s just you and your conscience, alone in front […]

By Tim Hayes The Other.  Who is it? The easiest target in the world, that’s who.  It doesn’t require much thought, analysis, planning, or empathy.  Just point and click.  Easy. Poof!  An enemy has been created, custom-ordered to your own conflicting simultaneous senses of both externally expressed superiority and internally suppressed insecurity. Instant fear.  Immediate […]

By Tim Hayes Mary and Joseph rode a dinosaur to Bethlehem. That sentence sounds ludicrous, right?  Ridiculous.  Crazy.  Insulting, even.  A purposely disrespectful exaggeration. But let’s think about this a bit more critically. If one believes, and is convinced beyond any doubt, that the earth is no more than 6,000 or so years old, why […]

By Tim Hayes It had been an especially intense week.  Not a bad week, quite the opposite.  But an intense one, filled with big events that required enormous and careful planning, and greatly focused execution. By Friday evening, the thought of collapsing into bed and sleeping the sleep of the dead, as reward for the […]

By Tim Hayes You ask a seven-year-old boy in the mid-1960s what he wants to be when he grows up, and you’ll get the expected responses – baseball player, policeman, fireman, even an astronaut like Major Nelson on “I Dream of Jeannie.” Then you ask me and get something altogether off-the-wall.  “I want to be […]