"Sit down beside me, I'll tell you a story, Of beautiful maidens, and men who are bold. The kind of a story to make you remember, the wonder of childhood before you grew old. " Mark W. Lewis I was attending the Summer Solstice Folk Music & Story Telling festival in Calabasas CA. I had gone to spend some time hanging out with my friend Bill Howard, hear some great story tellers and take a few workshops. Bill had encouraged me to join in the story swap, sort of a round robin, where each person get up a tells a 5 to 10 minute tale. I was not a story teller but loved and appreciated the art and hoped to improve my skills. I hadn't planned anything, so I fell back on a story I remembered from my childhood. It told of a young lad in Ireland who thinks he has gotten the best of a leprechaun only to have his own cleverness used against him. I was just getting started, when who should walk in and sit in the back row but Mark Lewis! Imagine for a moment what that was like? I couldn't breath, I couldn't see, I was not sure I could keep going. Mark just smiled, that smile that said 'it's all good! You've got this!' I found new things in that story I never knew were there. I did not tell that story; that story told me! Afterwords, Mark approached me to say how much he enjoyed it and we talked for a long while. Turned out we had watched each other's performances but never had the chance to talk. I made a friend that day. I shall miss him always.