LIFE — SEPTEMBER 26 WRITING PROMPT
Traveling to Distant Worlds
It took me a week to think of something that IS “outside my comfort zone,” and it’s a two-fer
My son was thirteen, and like most thirteen-year-olds, he was quite interested in video games. He saw a flyer from the Houston Symphony advertising a concert called “Distant Worlds,” featuring music from the game Final Fantasy. He asked if I’d take him; he offered to pay for both our tickets.
There were two problems: First, I didn’t think he fully understood that the concert was a symphony concert, not the tinny-sounding music and exciting gameplay onscreen that he was used to. What thirteen-year-old boy wants to take his mother to a symphony concert? On his own dime, at that? I knew that it would cost him almost all of the gift money he had saved. Second, I dread near-phobic foot-dragging and aversion, driving downtown or dealing with heavy Houston traffic on the 610 Loop. I love to drive — I think nothing of driving long distances. It’s the video-game-like maneuvering through aggressive hordes of other drivers that I loathe.
