John Lennon.

I've written about John Lennon a couple times in the last week, but today is his birthday--I don't care that it would have been his 64th--and I'd just like to take note of that. I've loved John Lennon ever since The Beatles arrived on the scene. I vividly remember one day in the fall of 1975 listening to his wonderful album "Mind Games" all day, then going out to eat that night with two young men--old acquaintances--at our favorite hidden away little East Side restaurant Residence. We were seated at a little table in a niche next to a large round table set in the window alcove.

Don't look now, but John Lennon and Yoko Ono are sitting at the next table.

And yes, they were. I can figure out that it was the fall of 1975, because Yoko Ono was very pregnant (Sean Lennon was born in October 1975). Did we go over and talk to them? No! Maybe if they were passing on the street you could say something to them, but here they were in the middle of eating dinner. It just didn't seem possible. But shouldn't the fact that I was listening to "Mind Games" all that day give me a special dispensation? It seemed that it should, but still it felt quite wrong to intrude, and we did not. Nevertheless, it was a huge thrill just to sit so near him for so long.

The postscript to this anecdote is that I sat at the very same table on another occasion, around the same time, with my brother and a friend of my brother's (whose name I can't remember). Midway through the meal a young woman rushed up to my brother's friend in a state of ecstasy and began hugging him, gushing about how much she loved him and had all his records. We were kind of drunk and didn't know what the hell was going on. Later, in a state of sober reflection, I realized that my brother's friend did look quite a bit like Bruce Springsteen.

So did I or the ecstatic young woman have the more intense personal engagement with her musical idol?