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BEN: “Waiter,” I said, in an exuberant mood, “I have a perfect life, but I don't have a knife.”
I was having breakfast with a friend on one of my periodic visits to London to conduct the Philharmonia Orchestra. I heard giggles behind me and, turning around, caught the eye of a girl of about twelve with a typically English pudding-bowl haircut. We exchanged smiles, and then I went back to my conversation and to my breakfast.
The next day, I passed the young lady again in the breakfast room and stopped to speak with her.
“Good morning. How are you today?”
She drew herself up ever so slightly and, with a tilt to her chin and a sparkle in her eye, answered me.
“Perfect,” she said.
Later, when she was leaving with her parents, I called out mischievously, “Have a perfect day!”
“I will!” she responded, as though it were the easiest, most obvious choice in the world.
And with that, she sailed out into a universe of possibility.