A TEAM WORTH ITS WEIGHT IN METALS

SILVER LION, 2010 CANNES INTERNATIONAL ADVERTISING FESTIVAL

I was in Starbucks writing a Safeguard script when Tony, my ECD, called.

"Where are you?"

"Starbucks."

"We need to talk," he said.

He sounded upset, so I invited him over.

"You'll come here?"

"No, come to the office."

The fact that Tony was upset and wanted to talk to me not at Starbucks, meant only one of two things. Either A) I was in trouble; or B) I was in BIG trouble.

I dragged myself to the office, desperately trying to recall if there was anything I did or failed to do in the past few days, that might've incurred his ire. An erroneous print ad? A client asking me off an account? Did I unknowingly offend yet again, a suit? A producer? A caster???

As I entered the Saatchi House, Tony and his co-ECD, Petchay, immediately made their way towards my desk. In the two minutes it took them to saunter over, I had already entertained thoughts of launching into a whole drama of how, despite natural appearances, I am not a goddess and thus, am far from perfection; or maybe opening with a statement like "I don't need this!!!", and walking out. For some reason, saner options escaped me at that moment.

"Can we talk to you? Outside?"

I walked behind them with my head bowed down, silently computing the remaining mortgage on my condo, and wondering how my mom would react to my telling her I was moving back in.

"Am I in trouble?"

Petchay was silent. He's never silent. I was definitely losing this job.

Tony was fingering through his phone.

"I just got a disturbing text," he began.

Before I could even complete in my mind a sentence that had the words "skeletons" and "closet" in it, the text message was shoved in front of my face.

My state of imbalance prevented me from reading the long text message properly, but the words easily popped out:

The

North

Face

Silver

Cannes

Lion

And I remember both of them panicking as I screamed. Apparently, it was still confidential. After five minutes of hyperventilation, they asked me to call my girls and my adopted son, Pao.

"Hello, Maan?"

In my effort to seem calm, I realized my voice sounded angry.

"Call the girls and Pao, and come outside. Tony and Petchay want to talk to us."

Not trusting myself to say or do anything, I stared at the concrete floor. I must have looked like I was sulking.

"Are we in trouble?"

I continued to stare.

The "disturbing text" revelation was replayed, but unlike their hysterical mother, my kids did not scream. 

They hugged.

I cried, realizing that Tony, Petchay and I were true winners.

And the Lion had nothing to do with it.