Sit down girl, you are embarrassing me!

One of the most special audiences ever

Sometimes when you are performing music, special moments happen. For famous people, it might be playing in an arena, with the biggest audience you have ever played to and they are singing the words to your song. That was never going to happen to me, but I have had the odd special moment.

One was in Florida after I performed my song Another Stretch in Iraq with the house band when a group of burly men who had served in Desert Storm came up to the stage with tears in their eyes. I didn’t know what was going on and was hoping that I was not going to get my head beaten in, on a sawdust-floored, biker-friendly bar thousands of miles from home. Here’s what happened there, if you missed it.

I was reminded of this, and the brotherhood of people who served in theater together, after my wife and I watched Hyena Road on Netflix a few nights ago.

Another special moment happened when I was still in high school. I had a modestly paying gig on Sunday afternoons at the Titirangi Coffee Lounge near my home in Auckland, New Zealand. I played easy-listening background music. Things like Etudes V, Op 6 by Fernando Sor, which my uncle Nico taught me to play when I was living in Holland.

On this particular day, the cafe was quiet, with maybe half a dozen customers including a little girl, maybe four years of age, and her grandmother, who was trying to enjoy a cup of tea and scone, or something along those lines.

Image by Craiyon AI

The little girl came over to the corner by the edge of a huge picture window featuring stunning views of the Manukau Harbour, behind the native bush of the Auckland rain forest, where I sat playing my guitar.

She started watching me intently.

Nana told her to come and sit down and finish her drink.

Having complied, the girl again came to where I was playing and started dancing. This was clearly embarrassing her grandmother, evidenced by the rosy hue of her face as she again instructed the little one to sit down, a little louder this time.

“Now!”

The girl gave me the most wonderful compliment I could ever hope for.

“But I can’t help it!”

Sadly her elder was not placated by that comment and told her that if she didn’t sit down straight away, they were going home.

At this point, she had the attention of everyone in the room, and seeing that perhaps she was being a little too prim and proper, she relented with a sigh of frustration, at least for a short time.

After waiting perhaps a respectable 10 minutes, so as not to draw attention to her clear embarrassment, she packed her granddaughter out of the premises.

I gave the little girl a big smile and she smiled back waving to me as they left through the front door.