The Moth Presents Malcolm Gladwell: Her Way

Malcom Gladwell many years ago I ruined a beautiful friendship and it was over a song which sounds like a strange thing to ruin a friendship over and what makes it even stranger is that the song was sung with the utmost love and affection my friend's name was Craig and I met him at college we both went to this little tiny place called Trinity at the University of Toronto and it was is this weird little place and we would wear gown long black academic gowns and jackets and ties to all meals and we would say Latin grace before we ate and we were it was this sort of strange place we weren't really we didn't really have jocks because we weren't large enough and we didn't really have a party culture because we were too nerdy for that all we really ever did was sit around and make fun of each other which I realize all students do but we did this to an extraordinary extent and the person who was best at that game of making fun at everyone was my friend Craig Craig was this tall incredibly handsome guy and he had this extraordinary charisma and women flocked to him he was just a sort of legend with with the ladies and he had this sense of humor that was just something that I had never encountered before in my life and he really kind of led us like Pied Piper and he he decreed for example at one point that everyone should have a nickname and not just a kind of casual nickname but a Syrian ick name that had been considered and thought about so for example there was a woman named Felicity Smith who was this kind of busybody she's kind of she ran everything and she ran around and she was always in people's business and you know we thought long and hard about what her nickname should be until Craig finally said Felicity split and there was a guy named Kai Carmody who was this incredibly serious studious guy and we wanted to have a nickname for him but it was very difficult because he was he was so boring and we thought about it and thought about it and finally Craig said hi comedy now that makes it sound like he's all some sweetness and light but he actually wasn't there was a kind of a mean streak in him he had an instinct for the jugular he really could expose and identify someone's weakness but it didn't matter because there was something about his sense that made it possible for him to pull that off you know so for example there was a guy named there was a guy who is this brilliant incredibly good-looking person who everyone loved and it was he was good he was just a kind of winner and he did all kinds of wonderful things on campus and he had one very small weakness which was that he wasn't nearly as successful with women as you would have thought and Greg Craig decreed that he should have a nickname and we couldn't think of one because this guy was so perfect and finally Craig came up with one and the guy's name was Saul Pinkston and Craig said small ding stone but that was an nicknames were just part of it what really Craig's real extraordinary gift was songs he had this ability to almost on the fly make up songs about people and he would sing them at the most kind of you know inopportune moments and it was incredibly it was just this gift that I had never seen before in anyone and I remember once there was a guy in my in our college called Phil walk and Phil was this really big kind of schlubby guy and his what was dressed really badly his hair was always in every direction was I was charging around and one time we were sitting in the dining hall we would always we would sit around Craig in the dining hall for hours after every meal and and Phil walk kind of charges in and Craig just starts singing the Phil walk song and it was we'd never heard it before and we think it made it up right on the moment but it was to the tune of feeling groovy by Simon and Garfunkel and it was slow down you're hulking mass your jeans are ripped we can see your ass and there was I forget the whole there's a whole long verse after that now and the chorus I just remembered the chorus I'm Phil walk I'm big and goofy to do to do do to do to do big and goofy now I realize in retrospect that I was in love with Gregg in that way that you are when you're 18 and you meet someone who's just more brilliant and light shines brighter than yours and I did everything you know all I wanted to do was to kind of be as funny as he was and to make him laugh and to bring him jokes and songs and see if I could exceeds his his his interest and you know I never was I was never as good as him but it didn't seem to matter because there was this quality of generosity about him he really wanted everyone around him to be as funny as he was and it was even an honor to be made of fun of by by Craig because he did it with such panache and such and such joy and I can remember the time that I thought that I would spend the rest of my life whenever I had some funny thought or came up with some funny song that I would just call up Craig and sing it to him and make him laugh and that was going to be you know a part of a part of who I was for for as long as I lived but then something happened that changed everything and that is that Craig met a woman named Lee and they decided to get married now Craig madly at graduate school they were both getting their PhD at Chicago and they were night and day he Craig was from a small town called Barry in Northern Ontario and from a very very modest background and Lee was from Phoenix and she was really wealthy your father was some hotshot Republican defense contractor and and she was he was Craig was a kind of indifferent student that he was still kind of working away on his ph.d cuz he I think spend so much time just sort of with people and where she was as brilliant she'd gotten her PhD already she got it like two years and she was off and more than as she was a choose incredibly Dom I mean we thought Gregg had a powerful personality but she put him to shame she she would finish his sentences she would pay for everything she would boss him around and worst of all she didn't have a sense of humor at all she had none of Craig's wonderful whimsical take on the world she was the anti Craig in in many ways and I realize now looking back with the perspective of history I realize now that I hated her I really did not just for the fact that she had taken Craig away but but but because she had changed him that she had changed who he was and what he meant to me but at the time I didn't realize that at all none of us did all we knew was that this beloved figure in our life was getting married and what kind of gift do you give to someone like that the ultimate songster well will you give him the gift of a song right not just any song but the best possible song you can come up with and that was where the trouble started the wedding was in Phoenix which is where her family was from and her parents were called Dickens Celeste and they were the they looked like they had fallen asleep under a heat lamp they they were that kind of uptight Republican Country Club kind of people and the the wedding was this extraordinary elaborate affair and there was there must have been seven different events and we drove up and down the interstate in these air-conditioned vans with chauffeur drivers and if we remember the bursal dinner was at this western-style steak house and they were big plates of kind of listening steaks it was just obscene and and we we had planned our song for the wedding and we decided that at the rehearsal we would just do a kind of a little a little teaser and at the end of the evening and my friend John who was with me he was elected to do the honors and he got up and he he took into his pocket and he took out a huge kind of folded bit of paper and he said I just want to say a very simple thanks to the people in Craig's life who have made him who he is that I'd like to thank his parents for giving him that joy I'd like to thank his science teacher in high school for giving him a love of of chemistry because chemistry was an idol and then I'd like to thank his Boy Scout leader who gave him such a love of the outdoors and most of all I'd like to thank the women in his life who paved the way for this wonderful relationship with Lee and he just started to read Rachel Mary Julie Lauren and then he unfolded the paper and it reached all the way to the floor and he just started reading one name after another and we of course were collapsed with laughter we thought this was the funniest thing of all time but I happened to look across a table at Lee and there was this mixture of loathing and contempt and pure rage on her face and I had this kind of feeling that oh my god and when we went back to the hotel that night I said to my friends I said you know maybe we can't do this song I I don't think I don't think Lee's going to take it well and for a moment for a moment we were going to shell off everything and I I wish to God that we had but we didn't because I think in some ways we could not wrap our mind around the fact that our friend Craig had grown up and moved on in our mind he we were still sitting around the dining room table at college with him singing songs so anyway the wedding was the next day and it was at some extravagant resort often the Desert Inn outside of Phoenix and every defense contractor in the state of Arizona was there and you know with their wives with the hair and the bosoms out to here there were big pictures of martinis on every table and all kinds of slapping and you know admiring references to run a regen and all kinds of long speeches and finally it was our turn and we were we were really nervous because we had been preparing this gift for so long and it meant so much to us that this is what we would give Craig on the greatest day of his life and so we walked to three of us walked to the front of the room and returned to the band that we said do you know Frank Sinatra's my way and I said of course and they said well our song will be to that and we started to sing and now the time has come for us to toast the boy from Barry he lived a life that's true and swore that he would never marry but then he met a girl who set him straight he couldn't run away so Craig he tied the knot he did it his way after I finished we finished the first verse I look over at Lee and she has that same look on her face she had and I can tell she knows what's coming she knows enough about Craig and more importantly about us to know that this will not end well and were I a savior or a smarter person I would have just cut it off then but I couldn't because we were in mid song girlfriends he's had a few in fact a lot the list is endless but Lee is a woman that's true she set him straight and now he's friendless he met her mom and dad who planned his wedding along the freeway so Craig he tied the knot he did it their way and then I look across at Lee and I see that she's she's she's standing up and then I and then I see that she grabs Craig by the hand and she pulls him up and I realized to my horror that they're leaving their own wedding reception and as they walked towards the door he looks back at me with this and the look in his eyes is a mixture of pain and confusion and betrayal and it's the one of the most painful moments of my life and it's also the last time I ever laid eyes on Craig but what are we gonna do well we're only we're only halfway through the song we we haven't even gotten to the bridge all of our best material is still ahead of us so we we keep singing to this random group of defense contractors in the middle of Arizona what is this man what has he got a shelf of bricks a squeaky cot she pays the bills he sits and rots she has her doctorate and he has not he's on a leash he's made his peace he'll do it her way

Channel: The Moth

Views: 205,692

Rating: 4.786634 out of 5

Keywords: The Moth, The Moth Radio Hour, The Moth Podcast, Malcolm, Gladwell, Her, Way, My, Frank, Sinatra, Wedding, Toast, song, reception, story, storyteller, storytelling

Id: uAQ98KPLGWk

Length: 15min 26sec (926 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 12 2012

Reddit Comments

[u/s1lv3rbug]

This is brilliant stuff. He is one of my favourite authors.

[u/calexil]

That was awesome, I want more.