The Edgefield

I live in Portland, Oregon. The Edgefield is a nice resort about twenty minutes east of Portland. They feature fine dining, and they offer more than a hundred guest rooms. They have a movie theatre, and you can get the spa treatment there if you want it. They have their own brewery, and a 3 par golf course to boot.
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This all started in 1911, when the county decided to build a poor farm in the middle of no where. A few years ago two brothers bought the place, and turned it into what it is today.
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I had never been there before. I went there with my friend Dan to see the Steve Miller Band. When we got there, we drove right by the massive stage that had been built for Steve Miller. We had tried to get there early; there were already hundreds of cars parked in cow pasture when we got there. They were just opening up even more cow pasture for even more cars to park.
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The "Concert" was being perfomed on the par 3 golf course. There was a sort of natural amphitheatre facing the stage. The golf course had been covered with green mats to protect the grass underneath. The "Concert" was actually a Very Large Picnic.
In order for this to work, eveyone had to sit down. That's what we were doing, and so was eveyone else around us. This way you could spend a splendid evening in July listening to some good live music, and be able to see these guys play the songs that had made them famous.
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About forty feet in front of us was this couple, along with their teenage son. They had brought with them perfectly good sand chairs to sit on, but they remained standing up, ruining the view of the stage for hundreds of people behind them, including me. They were ruining the Very Large Picnic.
I pondered this for a while. Then I decided to get up and talk to these people.
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I walked up to the wife and husband. In the nicest way I could think of, I told them that there were hundreds of people behind them that could not see the stage. All we could see were the backsides of three people standing up.
The husband said to me:"We are not going to sit down until the three guys in front of us sit down."
I told him this: "I am absolutely fearless. I am going to do for you what you are too afraid to do for yourself. I will tell the three guys in front of you to sit down too."
So I went over to the three guys. They got it right away. They were polite about it, and they sat down. And then so did the husband and wife and the teenage son.
I finally made it back to my little group. I got a lot of "thumbs up" from perfect strangers. Some people even applauded.
This meant a lot to me.
In my own small way, I had made the Very Large Picnic into a better experience for all the folks who, after all, had just wanted to see the Steve Miller Band.
Mr. Charming