The event, which I guess I didn't mention earlier, was a convention for people in the coin-op (vending machines, video/pinball machines) industry. One of my stepbrothers was (and is) a video game guy, and he invited his brother and me to join him at his expense. We did. Most folks arrived Friday afternoon or evening, then were up late (or, in some cases, all night) gambling. Saturday morning was Breakfast with John Madden, and we were all excited to go.
Breakfast, as it turned out, meant sitting in a small theatre in the hotel while Madden spoke. Everyone stumbled in (the event was pretty early in the morning, as I recall), bleary-eyed and hungover. We all quickly discovered two problems: there was no coffee or liquids of any kind (and everyone was dehydrated) and "breakfast" was a small platter of stale Danish and muffins.
We all slumped in our seats, wishing for coffee and a nap. We got neither.
What we got was Madden, stomping around the stage like a man possessed, waving his arms and offering football stories and life's great lessons taught with sports metaphors.
Madden, apparently, feeds off the energy of his audience. We had none to give. His strategy: stomp more, wave more, get louder. The deeper we slumped into our seats, the more frenetic he became. All around the theatre, people cringed at his high volume assault.
Eventually, and mercifully, Madden reached the end of his speech. (Whether he'd plan to end it at that point or gave up on us I couldn't tell.) He left us with this:
"There are three kinds of people in this world: people who make it happen, people who watch it happen, and people who say, 'what happened?'"
I was pretty sure I knew what kind we all were.
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