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Show It Takes Tvo . . . Life is a game you can't play single-handed, for "no man liveth unto himself." I By WINIFRED W1LLARD 1 IT WAS the close of a symphony season at a regular summering place in New York. Handsome in white flannels and flushed with triumph, tri-umph, the conductor of the great Metropolitan symphony orchestra, 60 artists playing as one man, was acknowledging the enthusiastic applause ap-plause and appreciation of his nation-wide audience. They had been listening to this orchestra for many days with mounting pleasure. The cheering ceased to give the leader time to speak, "It takes two to make a good concert," he said with a smile, "orchestra and audience." Real wisdom for every day living in that! It takes two for most things in life. Christmas aboard a great ship for Panama was nightmare to me. I proved the need of two by its very absence. The passenger at table wouldn't talk, just sat and looked bored. I am sure she was. I know I was. I tried it alone, hunted between be-tween meals for something to talk about or something to get her going, things to say to break the gloomy silence that always came when she came. Whatever I said brought her maddeningly superior "yes" or her dishearteningly final "no." Perhaps our vibrations or something were inharmonious. in-harmonious. I couldn't and didn't get far alone and the cruise was a flop because she wouldn't play her part. We both missed the zest of a great opportunity that took two. Fun in Teamwork Recently I was a guest in a family of five. On the porch, at the table, in the kitchen, anywhere, every day, conversation was a thrilling game that raced and ran through politics, sports, history, current happenings, religion anywhere keen, alert minds enjoy going. Everybody, mother, father, three strapping sons and I joined in laughing, talking, differing, agreeing. Repartee was stimulating, whoever happened to be around. It was this fine quality which the symphony conductor meant when he said to his audience, "It takes two to make a good concert." It does take two or ten, however many doesn't matter, to play the complicated compli-cated game of life where each has his part and where each part needs all the others. We can't do it alone. We are done for before we begin, if we try. A man who is significant only because be-cause he is a fairly common type, never lets you finish what you start to say. He has no patience with "it takes two." He wants to be the all and only. He cuts in on you, grabs the words out of your mouth, tells you what he thinks you are going to say, leaves you wondering where you were with your story and more than a little peeved. He makes me want to push my figurative toe into his conversational door the way the agent does, until I have finished what I was saying. He hasn't any monopoly on conversational rights. He is entitled to equal chance with what he wants to say. So am I! Only he never thinks so. And he rates as a rather high class social bore. It is most reprehensible whenever an agent tries the trick of putting his toe in my doorway to force an entrance to my home. But I am dead sure it is justifiable, conversationally conversa-tionally speaking, when any person breaks in and cuts my sentence in two just to make the opening bigger big-ger and bolder for himself. It takes two! Stockholders' Dilemma A while back in the Far West, the shadow of a sheriff darkened a hospital. hos-pital. Stockholders owned it. But they hadn't paid much attention to its need for money. Accordingly they faced either lose or pay. One day it fell to me to travel more than 250 miles through sizzling heat across a mid-summer desert to explain ex-plain to these stockholders their dire situation. Mercury stood about 105. The chairman had no notion of the hazardous stakes he was playing as he turned that group into a lawn party. Surely it was hot! Out of doors was a little more comfortable. But we were there to study a crisis. I chewed my lips at the futility I faced. After the chairman introduced me to the group he said, "While she talks, we will have some refreshments!" refresh-ments!" I wanted to throw back at him that it takes two to play; that this was their game, not mine; their hospital, not mine; and if ice cream was their deepest craving, I might like some too. It was as hot for me as it was for them. Instead I tried to count "ten brittle digits in a row," to calm down and to put their financial straits clearly before them. They ate their sweets. I talked my j heart out They lost their hospital. ! Then they cared. Life is like that. j No use talking, the single driver stands to lose more often than the double team! The man that wants to say it all and do it all and be it all and have it all, Cnds out sooner or later that "no man liveth unto himself" and that everywhere with everybody, you need me, I need you and we all need one another. Life does call for reciprocity. It docs i take two to win! I Copyright WN'U Service. |