This week I attended the CFA Institute’s Wealth Management conference in Boston. It’s an annual event that will be in L.A. next year, but since this time it was so close to Montreal, I figured it was worth the five-hour drive to hear the great speakers they had lined up.
The conference was really good in so many ways, and I was having trouble deciding which of the 12 presentations I would use as the inspiration for this week’s blog.
As I was driving home through the White Mountains of New Hampshire and the Green Mountains of Vermont, something happened that made me push the conference topics to the back burner.
It wasn’t something that I saw though. It was something that I heard, on the radio. When I have a long drive I always worry about falling asleep at the wheel, although it is much less of a problem for me lately, since I started sleeping better every night thanks to my CPAP machine.
To make sure that I stay awake while driving, I have a strong preference for talk radio. My wife and kids can’t stand talk radio, but I was alone, so it was a great chance to catch up on what Rush Limbaugh and the like were talking about on the US airwaves.
But when you are driving through the mountains and trying to listen to the radio, staying on any one station for more than 15 minutes is often a challenge. So what ends up happening is that every few minutes, I just hit the search button until something comes in with a strong enough signal.
Now besides talk radio, the other thing that usually keeps me awake is country music. I can’t say that I am a huge fan, but I have very eclectic tastes in music, and with country music the lyrics are usually such that you can sing along to any song even though you have never heard it before.
It’s hard to fall asleep when you are singing. And given the choice between listening to talk radio or listening to me sing in the car, I can tell you that my family would likely learn to LOVE talk radio. But I was alone, so country music it would be, at least for a song or two.
That was when Stealing Cinderella came on. I thought I recognized the singer’s voice, but it turns out that he just sounded like most other country singers, and I couldn’t even tell you his name now without googling it. But the lyrics really got to me.
It’s about a guy going to his girlfriend’s father’s house to ask for permission to marry her. Do guys still do that? I don’t know, but a little over 20 years ago, I did it. So the song brought back instant memories, especially the reaction I got from my father-in-law, who wished me luck but (wrongly) assumed that his daughter was not the marrying type.
But then the song goes on to describe the family photos that are placed all over the living room, including many of the little girl as she was growing up, riding her first bike, jumping on the bed, and of course playing Cinderella.
Now it was the heartstrings of the father of the 11-year-old daughter that were being tugged on. Yikes, where the heck did the time go?
In 30 seconds I went from reliving the experience of asking for the go-ahead to marry one man’s “Cinderella”, to fast-forwarding who knows how many years to some guy coming by and trying to steal MY Cinderella.
I know, she’s only 11, but ten years ago she was 1 and it feels like it was yesterday. And in ten years she will be 21 and who knows what future awaits her.
Too much to think about. Better stay off the Country Music stations and stick to talk radio.
