The world of Stephen Brockelman: Memoir, Arts, Opinion
As a kid, trading Halloween candy was a skill and great fun…until my sister got wise to my shenanigans.
When my sister, Sandi, and I were really young we were totally invested in putting on our costumes and collecting candy on Halloween. Our family lived in a neighborhood that really delivered the goods. After an hour or so, we’d come home with, quite literally, pounds of candy.
Like all other kids, we’d pour out our bounties in piles and get down to the serious business of trading. For a couple of years I got away with trading quantity for quality.
“How about this? I’ll trade you five jawbreakers for a Mounds Bar?”
If I felt any hesitation, I’d quickly change the Mounds request to a Heath Bar—it was smaller—and I’d add a couple of Hershey Kisses to seal the deal.
As we got a bit older, I felt the sting of my con-game come to an abrupt end. I made one of my lame trade offers and Sandi said, with great confidence and more than a little spite, “No. I’d rather throw my candy in the trash.”
I was busted.
I wish we’d had access to one of these magical machines back then. I can’t speak for my sister, but I would have fed it all my candy—except for the Mounds Bars and the Heath Bars, of course.
As a Sr. Writer at T. Rowe Price, I work with a group of the best copywriters around. We belong to the broader creative team within Enterprise Creative, a part of Corporate Marketing Services.
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A long and winding road: My path to T. Rowe Price was more twisted than Fidelity’s green line. With scholarship in hand, I left Kansas at 18 to study theatre in New York. When my soap opera paychecks stopped coming from CBS and started coming from the show’s sponsor, Proctor & Gamble, I discovered the power of advertising and switched careers. Over the years I’ve owned an ad agency in San Francisco; worked for Norman Lear on All in the Family, Good Times, Sanford and Son, and the rest of his hit shows; and as a member of Directors Guild of America, I directed Desi Arnaz in his last television appearance— we remained friends until his death. In 1988 I began freelancing full time didn’t look back.
In January 2012 my rep at Boss Group called and said, “I know you don’t want to commute and writing for the financial industry isn’t high on your wish list, but I have a gig with T. Rowe Price in Owings Mills…” I was a contractor for eight months, drank the corporate Kool-Aid, became a TRP associate that August, and today I find myself smiling more often than not.
