Day 337.57 and Tom

Had the distinct pleasure this afternoon of listening to an old friend talk about his latest novel.

He was the first of two speakers creating a mixture of people wanting to hear one, the other, or both.

You could almost separate them by author. There was the crime novel sports group  (on the left) and then there was the travel, romance, tell-all group on the right. It was like a congressional hearing or a mixed marriage seating arrangement.

As the presentation segued into the obligatory Q & A, a lady sitting in the first row confessed to being there to see the second author, but something that the fist author had said (reading from his book) caught her interest.

She asked why he had chosen MS as the protagonist's affliction. This, she informed us, because she had it.

He replied, in an honest and intimate tone, that he was diagnosed with it some ten years prior and felt he knew its insidiousness well enough to speak of it.

To which he followed with this:

"Being diagnosed with MS was the best thing that could have happened to me." In the silence that followed he added, "because it taught me the value of each and every day."

Amen brother Tom, amen.