Beautiful Goal

This afternoon, Joan Laporta, president of FC Barcelona, spoke at Stanford. I invited my pops to join me, since he is a huge soccer [especially Euro soccer] fan. The talk started at 4:30 but he got stuck in a meeting, and then traffic, so he didn't show up till 5:30PM! We decided to go anyway. To my surprise, the room was so packed that people were overflowing from the side of the seats to the door!

Mr. Laporta was so kind and humble--he agreed to numerous autographs [including one for each of us!] and photographs.

Pops misunderstood him at one point and actually told the guy he was an attorney, too!

Wine was served, which helped Pops act like a kid: when one guy was showing his friend Mr. Laporta's business card, my dad whipped out the card he got too and showed it off. When my colleague and I were lamenting that we expected Mr. Laporta to be taller, and my colleague said because she expected people with titles like that to be tall, my dad said, "I'm a vice president at C!t!bank, does that mean you expect me to be 6 feet tall?"

And it only got better. We had dinner at a Thai place afterwards, and he didn't realize he was ordering soup, and kept saying, "I ordered soup? Okay, I guess I ordered soup. I'm having soup, I guess!" as if the waitress took the order incorrectly! At the end of the meal, we got a cherry Jolly Rancher and a starlight peppermint. He asked for 2 watermelon Jolly Ranchers...no idea what that was about.

Never a dull moment with Pops!