There’s a great episode of The Crown that sums it up for me. Prince Phillip is overly excited to meet the astronauts from Apollo 11 during their royal visit and prepares a lot of deep and philosophical questions for them to discuss. However upon meeting them he is bitterly disappointed to find they are just normal humans that find fart jokes funny.
Never meet your heroes means exactly this: you will come to realise the person you look up to and hold in high esteem is just another person with typical person problems, if not have other character traits you despise. They’ve done something you find admirable, that’s great! But leave the relationship there.
Back in 2000 I lived in Loveland, OH which is just north of Cincinnati, OH. There used to be an old fashioned barber shop on Loveland-Madeira road.
I walked into the barber shop and was greeted by the barber and told to take a seat. There were two other men in the shop. One was in the chair and getting his hair cut and the other was reading a newspaper and I was unable to see his face at all. The barber finished with the guy in the chair and looked over at the man reading the newspaper and said:
“Neil you’re up.”
The man closed his newspaper and laid on the chair next to him…
And I found myself looking at the first man that walked on the moon.
I completely blew every circuit breaker in my brain. Somehow though I managed to keep my composure and didn’t turn into a complete idiot. As he got his hair cut we talked about mundane things, never once talking about space flight, although we did discuss aviation. At the time I was a skydiver and he actually had some questions about it. He told me that he had a ride under a parachute… I replied, yeah I’ve seen that video.
And that is how I met and had a conversation with Neil Armstrong.
There’s a great episode of The Crown that sums it up for me. Prince Phillip is overly excited to meet the astronauts from Apollo 11 during their royal visit and prepares a lot of deep and philosophical questions for them to discuss. However upon meeting them he is bitterly disappointed to find they are just normal humans that find fart jokes funny.
Never meet your heroes means exactly this: you will come to realise the person you look up to and hold in high esteem is just another person with typical person problems, if not have other character traits you despise. They’ve done something you find admirable, that’s great! But leave the relationship there.
Back in 2000 I lived in Loveland, OH which is just north of Cincinnati, OH. There used to be an old fashioned barber shop on Loveland-Madeira road.
I walked into the barber shop and was greeted by the barber and told to take a seat. There were two other men in the shop. One was in the chair and getting his hair cut and the other was reading a newspaper and I was unable to see his face at all. The barber finished with the guy in the chair and looked over at the man reading the newspaper and said:
“Neil you’re up.”
The man closed his newspaper and laid on the chair next to him…
And I found myself looking at the first man that walked on the moon.
I completely blew every circuit breaker in my brain. Somehow though I managed to keep my composure and didn’t turn into a complete idiot. As he got his hair cut we talked about mundane things, never once talking about space flight, although we did discuss aviation. At the time I was a skydiver and he actually had some questions about it. He told me that he had a ride under a parachute… I replied, yeah I’ve seen that video.
And that is how I met and had a conversation with Neil Armstrong.
Tell him any good fart jokes?