I have told this story many times. Always, perhaps, subliminally making the case for accessing, and thusly increasing, my depth of emotional acumen. Here is how it unveiled almost thirty years ago.
It is early evening at a swanky French restaurant across the street from our offices in Seattle’s lower Queen Anne district. I am dining with a young girl with beautiful copper-colored hair, sparkling green eyes and a sophisticated and effervescent personality. To say that I was in love would understate the impact this person had already had on my life in the six months we had been dating.
Having grown up with sports, played baseball at a very high level in the hotbed of Southern California, it was no seventh-inning stretch that I was Marketing Manager and Circulation Director for a sports magazine publisher. I loved the job, working with our national distributor, the network of wholesalers and retailers, the media, the plethora of writers, photogs and having access to every ballpark, stadium or arena in the world. Hog heaven for a sports junkie.
As we sat and dined, conversation drifted in, out and around my experiences in that world and hers as a classical pianist, ballerina, linguist and world traveler. I was learning about French food, the language and the secrets of Provence as we ate, drank and laughed.
When it was my turn to push the conversation I started in with another cliched tale of the ballplayer who first introduced me to chewing tobacco, the only continuity thread being that his nickname was Frenchy. She put up a hand like a traffic officer holding it there so I felt compelled to place mine into hers. As she gently intersected her fingers with mine and looked deep into my eyes with her dazzling emeralds I felt a moment of truth was about to magically unfold.
And she said, ‘you know, you are rather one demential’.
Blink. Head shake. Arrhythmia.
‘Well, yeah, I guess, but…’
‘All you talk about is sports’.
‘Yeah, but….’
‘No music, art, literature, culture, philosophy…..’
‘It is my job, that is what I do’.
As our hands separated and returned to their respective corners of the ring, it felt what I interrupted to be an impeding doom. Quick - quote some Shakespeare I remember thinking.
’Tell you what we’ll do’, she continues, thankfully in English, ‘if you would like our relationship to continue, I think your personal character and experience would exponentially increase if you were to spend more time at the theatre, in museums, at the library and in places other than dugouts, locker rooms and press boxes’.
I am flabbergasted, eyes opening wider than the Mississippi at high tide. Speechless, I sip the expensive wine.
‘Therefore, should you decide to participate, you can keep one of the teams you follow so closely and trade all the rest for our little experiment in growth, change, culture and romance. One team’.
‘One?’
‘One’.
‘OK, I’ll give it some thought, when do I need to respond?’
’Now’.
’Now?’
’Now’.
In a somewhat comical side note, there was a couple sitting at the table next to us who had been obviously eavesdropping the entire conversation. As I took a deep breath with consideration equally deep, I turned my head wiping my mouth with the linen napkin. The guy at the table was staring at me apparently caught up in the decision drama unfolding in real time. He gave me a subtle shake of head indicating the classic ‘don’t do it dude’.
I excused myself to go to the men's room. Where I tossed handfuls of cold water in my face attempting to flush out the correct response to her outrageous proposition then gazed blankly into the mirror hoping to find salvation in the reflection.
I walk back to the table adjusting the windsor knot in my silk tie and remembering that she had recently given it to me as a birthday gift.
I sit. She is radiantly watching as is the guy next to us. As is the waiter.
I take another sip of the Chateauneuf-du-Pape, suddenly aware of its delicate and robust finish.
‘Go Huskies’.
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