Um…I don't know how to answer that

Today my last task before leaving the office was to meet with the head of this company with which we’re considering doing business. We sit. We talk. We make idle chitchat about the weather.

Him: “Yeah, it looks like the rain is backing off.”
Me: “Oh, good. I hope it stays that way since I’m going to a football game tomorrow. Well, I’m really just going for the marching band.”

And then it came. The question.

Him: “Marching band? What’s that?”

To explain, this gentleman is born and bred in Israel. He’s only been in the States for about ten years. Furthermore, he’s a soccer fan.

Regardless, I was taken aback. I hadn’t the foggiest clue how to answer that. I mean, it’s a marching band. It’s a band. It marches. I felt like he had just asked me to define “blue” for him. I was blown away. After all, I had spent a large percentage of my life marching in or working with bands.

Eventually I put myself back together enough to give him some sort of an answer, but the confusion remains. It’s not often that you’re asked a question which comes from such a foreign perspective. And, really, that’s a shame. We all ought to get these questions from time to time to shock us out of our own little worlds and realize that there are billions of other people out there, each of which has his own perspective on things.