A few months ago my dear friend Paul and his girlfriend Abei got married. They live in Perth, Australia. I wanted to get them something special to wish them well so I gave them a boomerang. I know it sounds like a cheesy gift but there’s more to the story. You see, this wasn’t just any boomerang but the first boomerang I ever owned. It was my favorite boomerang ever and it hurt to let go of it. Seriously, I loved that boomerang. But the reason I gave something away that hurt to let go of is tied to another boomerang.
I started throwing boomerangs in my 20’s. The left-brain side of me was fascinated how a piece of wood could fly through the air so gracefully. The right-brain side of me just loved how cool they looked. Over the course of a dozen years I amassed probably 20 different boomerangs in various styles and colors.
About that same time, a bunch of us creatives in the Norfolk/Va. Beach area had a monthly rotating poker game and one of our newest members was a designer named John Koehler who had moved to the area a few years earlier. After months of playing with us, John offered to host a game at the studio he built above his garage. It was a large space, probably 25′ x 25′ with a peaked ceiling, lots of light and at least four workstations set up around the perimeter of one large room. Oh, and one more thing–the walls were covered from top to bottom with mounted boomerangs. WTF?! My jaw dropped when I walked in. There was easily over a hundred of them. Turns out before John was a designer, he was a world champion boomeranger. He even went on Foster’s world tour. Yes, he got paid to travel around the world to throw boomerangs.
All through the evening as we’re playing cards, there was one boomerang out of the hundreds on the walls that I couldn’t stop staring at. It was completely different than all the rest. I finally had to ask John about it. John told me that it was an original 75-year old hand-cut Aboriginal hunting boomerang from Australia. It was the second oldest boomerang he owned. I told him I had never seen anything like it and just found it fascinating. And that’s when John gave me the boomerang. Yep. Just like that. He said if I liked the boomerang that much, then it should be mine. It is a gesture that I have never forgotten. 
That boomerang has been mounted on the wall of my office ever since. And over the years, I’ve made it a point to give away things that are special to me to people who are special to me. Because when it hurts to let something go, it means that much more.
And that’s why I sent Paul and Abei a boomerang.
Plus it didn’t hurt that the year John won the World Championship, it was held in Perth. 🙂
