The Dame and the Princess

To me, the story in this Washington Post article isn't that Julie Andrews was in the District today. Nor is it that Ms. Andrews read to a room full of people from a book she had written. It isn't even that she took the time to pose for pictures. No, to me, the story in this article is in the second and third paragraphs ...

But 9-year-old Graham Walker noticed only the voice, that clipped, hills-are-alive British accent that's pure Julie Andrews and that was reading to him and 11 other children yesterday at the District's Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library.

Graham knows that voice, too. He's such a Julie Andrews fan that, when he was 3, he dressed as Mary Poppins for Halloween, and he went as Maria to the singalong of "The Sound of Music."

*wipes tear from corner of right eye*

Oh, they start so young these days.

*wipes tear from corner of left eye*

Seriously, though, it struck me how pedestrian those two paragraphs were ... how natural they were to read ... as if it were nothing out of the ordinary. Nevermind that this nine-year-old is a boy and that he's dressed at characters that Ms. Andrews has portrayed. What is important here is that this child idolized Ms. Andrews and he was able to meet her. I applaud the Post for depicting it as simply that.