Malcolm Gladwell - Her Way

 

 

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 this weird little place. And we would wear long black academic gowns and jackets and ties to all meals and we would say Latin grace before we ate.

 

It was this sort of strange place. 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, [audience chuckle] 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 of 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 this legend 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 decreed, for example, at one point that everyone should have a nickname. And not just a kind of casual nickname, but a nickname that had been considered and thought about. So, for example, there was a woman named Felicity Smith who was this kind of busybody. She ran everything and she ran around and she was always in people's business. And, we thought long and hard about what her nickname should be until Craig finally said, "Flickity Split." [audience chuckle]

 

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 so boring. And we thought about it and finally Craig said, "High comedy." [audience chuckle] Now that makes it sound like he's all sort of 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. 

 

So, for example, there was a guy who was this brilliant, incredibly good-looking person who everyone loved, and he was just a kind of winner. And he did all kinds of wonderful things on campus. He had one very small weakness which was that he wasn't nearly as successful with women as you would have thought. And 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 Dickston," [audience chuckle] but nicknames were just part of it. What really, Craig's real extraordinary gift was songs. 

 

He had this ability to, almost always on the fly, make up songs about people. And he would sing them at the most kind of 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 our college called Phil Walk. And Phil was this really big kind of schlubby guy, and he always dressed really badly, and his hair was always in every direction. He was always charging around. And one time were sitting in the dining hall, we would sit around Craig in the dining hall for hours after every meal. And Phil Walk kind of charges in, and Craig just starts singing the Phil Walk song. And we'd never heard it before, and we think he 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 hulking mess. Your jeans are ripped. We can see your ass." [audience chuckle] And I forget the whole-- there's a whole long verse after that, and the chorus. I just remember the chorus. "I'm Phil Walk. I'm big and goofy. [imitates music] [audience laughter] Big and goofy." 

 

I realized, in retrospect that I was in love with Craig in that way that you are when you're 18 and you meet someone who's just more brilliant and whose light shines brighter than yours. And I did everything. 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 seize his interest. And, 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 fun of by Craig because he did it with such a panache and such joy. And I can remember at 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 a part of who I was 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 met Lee at graduate school. They were both getting their PhD at Chicago. They were night and day. Craig was from a small town called Barrie in northern Ontario from a very modest background. And Lee was from Phoenix and she was really wealthy. Her father was some hotshot Republican defense contractor. And Craig was a kind of indifferent student. He was still kind of working away on his PhD because he, I think, spent so much time just sort of with people. And where she was brilliant, she'd gotten her PhD already. She got it like two years and she was off. And more than that, she was incredibly dominating. I mean, we thought Craig had a powerful personality, but she put him to shame. 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 many ways. [audience laughter]

 

And I realize now-- looking back with the perspective of history, I realize now that I hated her. I really did. [audience chuckle] Not just for the fact that she had taken Craig away, 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. [audience chuckle]

 

The wedding was in Phoenix, which is where her family was from. And her parents were called Dick and Celeste. And they looked like they had fallen asleep under a heat lamp. [audience laughter] They were that kind of uptight, Republican, country club kind of people. The wedding was this extraordinary elaborate affair and there must have been seven different events. And we drove up and down the interstate in these air-conditioned vans with chauffeured drivers. And I remember the rehearsal dinner was at this western style steakhouse and there were big plates of kind of glistening steaks. It was just obscene. [audience chuckle] And we had planned our song for the wedding. We decided at the rehearsal we would just do a kind of a little teaser. And it's 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 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. 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 chemistry, because chemistry was-- and 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." [audience chuckle]

 

And he just started to read, "Rachel, Mary, Julie, [audience laughter] 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. [audience chuckle] 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. [audience laughter] Okay? I don't think Lee's going to take it well." And for a moment, we were going to shelve everything. And I wished to God that we had, [audience chuckle] 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, 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 off in the desert outside of Phoenix. And every defense contractor in the state of Arizona [audience laughter] was there with their wives with the hair and the bosoms out to here. [audience chuckle] There were big pitchers of martinis on every table and all kinds of back slapping and admiring references to Ronald Reagan and all kinds of long speeches.

 

And finally it was our turn. And 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, the three of us walked to the front of the room and we turned to the band and we said, "Do you know Frank Sinatra's 'My Way'?" And they said, "Of course." And we said, "Well, our song will be to that." And we started to sing. 

 

And now the time has come for us toast the boy from Barry. He lived a life that's true and swore that he would never marry. [audience chuckle] But then he met a girl who set him straight. He couldn't run away. [audience chuckle] So, Craig, he tied the knot. He did it his way.

 

After we finished the first verse, I look over at Lee and she has that same look on her face that she had. [audience chuckle] And I can tell she knows what's coming. [audience laughter] She knows enough about Craig and more importantly, about us to know that this will not end well. [audience laughter] And were I a savvier or a smarter person, I would have just cut it off then, but I couldn't because we were in mid song. [audience laughter] 

 

“Girlfriends. He's had a few, [audience chuckle] 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. [audience laughter] He met her mom and dad who planned his wedding along the freeway. [audience chuckle] So, Craig, he tied the knot. He did it their way.” [audience reaction]

 

And then I look across at Lee and I see that she's standing up. And then I see that she grabs Craig by the hand and she pulls him up. And I realize to my horror that they're leaving their own wedding reception. [audience reaction] And as they walk 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 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 going to do? [laughter and applause] We're only halfway through the song. We haven't even gotten to the bridge. All of our best material is still ahead of us. [audience chuckle] So, we keep singing [audience laughter] 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."