David McElroy

I was in a lousy mood by the time I arrived at a fast food place for dinner late Sunday. I hadn’t finished with clients until around 9:30 p.m. and I was annoyed by several things that had happened earlier.

Nothing much had gone right for me Sunday. I considered it a bad day.

I had been seated alone for a few minutes when I heard an excited high-pitched voice call my name.

“David!” called out 11-year-old Sophie, who ran over to my table to hug me. “I didn’t know you would be here!”

She was genuinely excited. It turned out that her mother had some business to take care of and she brought Sophie — and younger brother, Noah — for the trip.

Sophie ran back to the table where she had left her purse and a book. She told her 6-year-old brother, who came running.

“Mr. David!” called out Noah.

He jumped into the seat where I was sitting and wrapped his arms around me. He was very happy and didn’t want to let go.

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I was sitting in a restaurant tonight when I noticed a young couple at a nearby table.

They were attractive, stylish and looked like the sort of people advertisers use to sell expensive apartments and luxury vacations to upper-middle-class professionals.

But after a while, I realized something strange was happening.

For nearly the entire meal, both of them were focused on taking photographs.

Not casual snapshots. Elaborate productions.

They adjusted lighting. They moved glasses and silverware around on the table. They repositioned plates after the food arrived. They took photographs individually. They took photographs together. They checked the pictures carefully, rejected most of them and started over repeatedly.

Then came the strange part.

The moment they were ready to take the actual photographs of themselves together, both of them suddenly transformed.

They leaned toward each other warmly. Their faces became animated. They smiled with what appeared to be genuine joy and affection. For a few seconds, they looked like one of those impossibly happy couples social media influencers are always pretending to be.

Then the photographs were finished. And the expressions disappeared instantly.

Not gradually. Instantly.

It was like watching actors step out of character after a director yelled “cut.”

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Lauren is a university professor. We met several years ago and she immediately impressed me. She was intelligent, thoughtful and highly accomplished. She came across as serious and rational.

One day, she started talking to me about Taylor Swift.

I assumed she simply liked the music. Millions of people do. There wouldn’t have been anything unusual about that. But the longer she talked, the stranger the conversation began to feel.

She told me about traveling to concerts. She talked about exchanging “friendship bracelets” with strangers she’d never met before. She described the emotional connection fans felt with each other — and with Swift herself — in ways that sounded as though she was talking about a guru or messiah.

These weren’t simply people attending concerts for entertainment. They were devotees gathering with other devotees who believed they were participating in something meaningful together. They seemed to believe they had discovered some important truth.

What fascinated me most was the intensity of it. I’ve known religious converts who spoke with less passion. And this woman wasn’t unusual.

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