DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

The Chronicle ran a nice interview with Larry Ellison recently. The first half is unusual in that it focused on human-interest questions like “What do you want people to remember you for?” and “Is it hard for someone like you to be friends with anybody?” In responding, Ellison let his hair down, which in the opinion of someone who let his hair down in 1992, makes for a nice change of persona.

I had a brief encounter with Larry Ellison many years ago. I was working for him at the time. Not that he’d have known it… Oracleville had only 3 of its current 6 towers, yet the complex was already big enough to sport five restaurants, a health club, and a shoe-repair business.

My group happened to work in the same building as the CEO’s office, and as I recall the nearest two parking spaces to the front door were marked “Reserved.” Presumably the executive managers’ time was so valuable that the corporation couldn’t afford the extra minutes it would take them to walk in from further across the parking lot.

Anyway, alongside those first couple reserved spaces was a striped-off area about ten feet wide, a buffer to protect the execs’ imported über-sedans from the less elite vehicles that could be afforded by the people who worked for them. This striped area was a perfect spot for a single motorbike, such as the beater red Kawasaki for which I’d paid $700. Yup: most days, I parked next to Larry Ellison.

My close encounter happened 100 yards away, in the left-turn lane from Marine World Parkway. At a red light, I checked my sideview mirror and found I was looking over the top of something low and sporty, a car I recognized as one of the few I spotted frequently in those top two parking spots. I had a brief vision of Ellison pulling up alongside as I parked my loud, farting, occasionally smoky motorbike. In the vision, I gave him a nervous wave and smile, and he called Security to have me and my p.o.s. motorbike towed up the highway to the Sybase parking lot.

So when the light changed, I did the only sensible thing: I circled the parking lot twice, waited until he was safely inside, and then I parked next to him.