"The world is changed by your example, not by your opinion."
|
 |
When I was a teenager, I loved The Allman Brothers Band. So when I heard they were playing the Greek years later, I rushed out and got a couple of tickets. I figured I would go with my buddy David Graham, who was also a big fan.
Then I met the love of my life, though I didn't know it at the time, and thought I would take her. She had never heard of them but said she would go. It was our second date.
When we got to the Greek, the band was already on. We opened the curtain, and all we saw was the audience, a sea of head bangers going wild. The music was deafening. And that's when I remembered Liz mentioning, on our first date, how much she liked Simon and Garfunkel.
Amazingly, we survived that experience and kept seeing each other. And in the back of my mind, I still hoped to convert Liz to liking the Allman Brothers.
Then one day, at a party at my sister's house, I saw my opportunity. We were talking with Mason Buck, a friend of ours who reviewed books for The New York Times. Liz and I majored in English, so we were really enjoying the conversation. There was music playing in the background, and I slipped away for a moment and put on "Blue Sky," one of the Allman's best songs, and returned.
I waited, thinking that at any moment Liz would say, "Wow! This is beautiful, who is this?" And at last, she did turn and said, with quite a lot of feeling, "Is this the longest song you've ever heard?"
And I realized two things: I don't need to make everyone like everything I like, and how very happy I was that Liz liked me.
|
|
|
|
