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- #70: Hot Boy Summer
#70: Hot Boy Summer
Shem Opolot
May 03, 2024
Hi! Welcome to The Friday Fix! You’re reading this because you probably stumbled upon this post somewhere on the internet instead of where it should be—in your inbox. But no worries; we can fix that.
Who am I? I’m Shem Opolot, a health professional turned content creator, passionate about helping people be their best selves in life and work.
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I have over ten years of work experience in healthcare, program management, and data analytics on two continents. So, I know a little about helping you work smarter
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Hi! I'm Shem Opolot, and this is The Friday Fix, my weekly newsletter. If you've received it, you’re either subscribed or someone forwarded it to you. If you fit into the latter (yes, I’m the kind of person who uses words like “latter”) camp and want to subscribe, then click on the shiny button below:
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Happy Friday 🎉 Welcome to the 70th issue of the Friday Fix! If you’re new here, I’m so glad you came. Newsletters are SO back. If you’re old here, get up and stretch; you’ve been in that seat for a while (But don’t leave the building).
Question: When someone is presenting and they establish eye contact with you, is it a universal rule that you're supposed to nod in approval? Asking for a friend…
LIFE.
Hot boy Summer
Gif by TABASCObrand on Giphy
I finally know what it’s like to be a hot girl.
We took the kids to a crowded public park the other day, and I carried Zi’s ball because I didn’t want him to bawl over someone else’s ball like last time. You’d be surprised how one ball can be as pivotal as someone cutting a game of cards right after you picked five back-to-back.
You must have the right number of balls.
Too many balls cause low demand on the playground, which is a good way to lose your ball on the day.
Too few balls is cruel, but you can’t control that, so you pray you and some other parents are telepathic.
The right number of balls creates sufficient interest in all the balls without things getting Lord of the Flies-y.
The right number of balls also allows that one kid to take his ball at the most inconvenient time without completely screwing up the ratios. You know that kid: always had a shiny new ball or bike. Always showed up vaselined—head-to-toe—in a full kit. Always got placed on a team even though they weren’t very good.
Oh my God…is Zion that kid? (It’s too early to tell. I’ll keep you posted.)
This time, our ball was the only ball on the playground, so I became the hottest attraction on the playground.
Mothers whose sons couldn’t leave me alone followed me like ducklings in a pond, trailing their mother duck.
A little white girl tugged at my shorts like the lady who touched the fringe of Jesus’ garment in search of a miracle. She looked into my eyes and smiled. I smiled back and greeted her. She said nothing and stared until her concerned mother whisked her away. As they walked away, I overheard her mum confirming, “YES, He’s so tall.”
What color do black people turn when they blush? Yes—that one. That one was me.
This one lady’s son chased the ball around the playground in a blind rage, yelling at anyone who tried to touch it. The lady was visibly embarrassed, and I comforted her by saying, “We’ve all been there.” (We hadn’t—her son was OUT OF CONTROL). I added a slice of cheese to my deli sandwich of deception by assuring the lady she was doing her best (She wasn’t—she was wearing six-inch heels at a children’s park.)
I can’t think of a single human phenomenon that maintains world order as well as a lie.
PS: This whole time, Zion followed a cute little girl around the playground, obeying all her orders with military precision.
THINGS.
A quote courtesy of The Phoenix Project
Many rewards in life will elude you if you're not willing to be a little uncomfortable at first.
Now watching.
I watched this last week, and the twist at the end? A must-watch.
WORK.
For my next trick…
Here’s your data:
What if you want to remove the UGXs from all the numbers at once?
Enter—TEXTAFTER.
TEXTAFTER, which is appropriately named, returns all the characters after a specified character or string of characters.
=TEXTAFTER(text, delimiter)
The delimiter is the character or string of characters you use as a signpost to guide Excel.
Entering “X” means we’re asking Excel to return everything after the “X” in UGX.”
But wait, it gets better.
Because TEXTAFTER is a dynamic array function (don’t ask today), you can do this:
Yep. I know 🤯
💡 There’s TEXTBEFORE also, and you can guess what it does.
If dynamic arrays have piqued your interest, watch this.
FUN.
The Friday Fix Playlist
In each sentence, a word is concealed, such as the word no in sentence five. If you can find the buried words and read them in order from 1 to 6, they will form a well-known proverb.
1. The word buried here has only one letter.
2. Did you find a jelly roll in Gaskin's Bakery?
3. It's the best one I've ever seen.
4. The rug at her stairway was made in India.
5. He's an old friend.
6. Amos sold his bicycle to a friend.
Answer below
Shem’s picks
✅ At what age do we stop discovering new music?
✅ How to get people to listen to you
✅ 5 Lessons from a conversation with a world-renowned happiness expert
Answer: A rolling stone gathers no moss.
Have a great weekend,
— Shem
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