Last night two of my adult daughters and I went to
neighboring Melbourne, Florida, to see Men at Work, a band whose first two albums enjoyed massive success in the 1980s.
(It's really just Colin Hay, the original singer, and a band he's put together.)
Hay still has 90+ percent of his voice, and we thoroughly enjoyed the show.
But there was a
drunk couple in front of us who tried to stand up during much of the beginning of the show.
Now I'm all for standing during a concert, but if you have any experience with concerts at all, you know that some concerts are sit-down and others are standing, and still others are sitting or standing depending on the section in which you're seated.
These two
kept trying to urge the crowd behind them to stand up with them. Nobody did, because it wasn't that kind of show.
They were standing right in front of us, and blocking my daughter Veronica's view. So I finally stood up and said to the guy (and my daughters can vouch for this):
"Look, man, it's a sit-down show."
He stared at me blankly. I continued:
"Have you not been to concerts before? I'll explain it to you. You get the vibe of a concert within the first five minutes. Some shows are standing, some are seated. This one is seated. I myself would prefer to stand, but I recognize that this is a seated show and that it would be disruptive for me to be standing. It's a sit-down show,
man."
For a moment he just stared at me. My daughters later said they feared he was about to punch me in the face.
Instead, he extended his hand, I shook it, and he and his wife sat down.
I couldn't believe that worked!
What works with a drunk couple at a concert is highly unlikely to work with the enemies you and I face every day, however.
They are not one good argument away from taking that dagger off our necks.
So if we're going to get through this crazy situation, in which hostile forces occupy practically every institution, we're going to have to be
more clever than that.
And i don't want us just to get through it. I want us to prosper through it, to become better friends, better parents, better income earners, better communicators, better providers, better human beings -- unbreakable and ready to stare down anything.
If that sounds like the right attitude to you, join me in here:
https://www.OneBuckTrial.com
Tom Woods