Lifestyle
L.A. Affairs: Was it love at first sight or just the thrill of seeing Elton John?
Some people might wonder: Is true love at first sight just a romantic fantasy? Or does it ever actually happen? These weren’t thoughts that had yet occurred to me when I was 13 years old. I was old enough to have started noticing girls, but the notion of true love, let alone at first sight, was still abstract. That was soon going to change.
My main love back then was music. I was playing keyboards in bands with schoolmates and had dreams of becoming a rock star. I was into music by bands like Emerson, Lake & Palmer and Yes, but my older sister and I were also big fans of Elton John. When we heard he was going to perform in town, we begged our mother to take us. Ever the trouper, she agreed to load up the car with me, my sister and a bunch of my sister’s teenage friends.
One of these friends invited her younger sister Susan to come along. Being the two youngest in the car, Susan and I were relegated to the “way back” of our Ford Country Squire station wagon.
Sitting across from her on those tiny fold-out rear seats, I felt something I’d never felt before. She was tall and striking, with long brown hair that had straight bangs above her bright brown eyes. She laughed with a dimpled smile and was easy to talk to. I was instantly smitten and nearly forgot why we were all taking that long drive from the San Fernando Valley to Inglewood. Is this what true love feels like?
Once inside the Fabulous Forum, I made sure to pick a seat next to her. Elton was also fabulous, though my mind admittedly wandered much of the time. I’m sure I spent most of the show looking at her rather than the stage. She sang along to “Benny and the Jets” and “Crocodile Rock,” while I wondered: Is she feeling what I’m feeling? Is there a spark for her too? Or is she put off by my braces, my glasses or my height disadvantage? These questions would have to wait — Elton was her focus that night.
Back at Portola Junior High School in Tarzana, I took every opportunity to try to run into her. She was a grade below me, so that meant scouting the courtyard at lunchtime and between classes, then trying to come up with reasons to have a conversation. A safe excuse was to discuss whatever was new with Elton. I surprised her once with a new Elton John album on its first day of release. I sometimes would manage to come up with excuses to phone her, and we would have long conversations until one of us would be told by a sibling to stop hogging the line.
Through these encounters my feelings for her continued to grow. She was intelligent, witty and kind, and she shared my love of making music. How could there ever be anyone more perfect for me?
Before too long I got up the courage to profess my love to her. I went over to her house and she listened patiently as I told her how I felt and expressed my certainty that we would marry someday. Susan sat quietly and listened, and with kindness she gently explained that she did not feel the same way. She said that she hoped we could remain friends. Naturally I was crushed but somehow still imagined this was merely a temporary setback.
We did keep in touch over the next few years, albeit with less frequency. I continued to play in various bands, and she became the star of her high school choir. We’d share our experiences on long phone calls. By the time I turned 16, my family had moved south to Westchester near Los Angeles International Airport, and hers had moved further north to Westlake Village. The extra distance didn’t completely diminish my hope, but it certainly made the odds of us crossing paths much more remote. But as luck would have it, that summer Susan and her sister dropped by for a visit one day when they happened to be in the area.
As she got out of the car, I instantly had the same feeling I experienced three years earlier. Could things be different for her this time? I now had the advantage of my braces being off. Contact lenses had replaced my glasses — plus the height advantage was now mine. Lo and behold, she casually suggested that maybe we could go out sometime. I made sure that “sometime” would be as soon as possible.
Our first real date was ice skating at Topanga Plaza, followed by dinner at Carl’s Jr. She was still easy to talk to, and still the love of my life. She also revealed a mischievous side. She had said before the date that she didn’t know how to skate very well, but then proceeded with a grin to skate circles around me with the grace of an Olympian. It was the first of many examples that Susan was never someone to be underestimated.
We ended that evening with our first kiss, something I had been imagining since that first concert. It was worth the wait, and we have been inseparable ever since.
Sunday marks 50 years since that fateful Elton John concert on Oct. 6, 1974. In the decades since, Susan and I have played in bands together, started companies together and traveled the world together. We’ve shared over 42 years of marriage, raised two wonderful children and have been blessed with a grandchild. And of course, we have attended countless more Elton John shows. Through it all, I feel truly blessed to have had 50 years of that “love at first sight” feeling each and every time I see her.
The author is a semiretired strategic adviser for audio and musical instruments companies, having previously been a studio musician and product designer. He and Susan, both Los Angeles natives, played in bands together for many years and co-founded the guitar products company Line 6. They now reside in Ventura County and still play music together at home.
L.A. Affairs chronicles the search for romantic love in all its glorious expressions in the L.A. area, and we want to hear your true story. We pay $400 for a published essay. Email LAAffairs@latimes.com. You can find submission guidelines here. You can find past columns here.
Students walk on the Stanford University campus on March 14, 2019, in Stanford, Calif.
Ben Margot/AP
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Ben Margot/AP
When Theo Baker arrived at Stanford University a few years ago, he joined the student newspaper, following the path of his journalist parents, Peter Baker, a White House correspondent for The New York Times, and Susan Glasser, a writer for The New Yorker.
Through his reporting as a student journalist, he eventually broke a story about manipulated data in Stanford President Marc Tessier-Lavigne’s neuroscience research that helped lead to the university president’s resignation.
Theo Baker’s book, How to Rule the World: An Education in Power at Stanford University was released May 19. In it, Baker describes Stanford as a place where proximity to Silicon Valley gives rise to a parallel system of influence, recruitment and money, with investors looking to identify promising students almost as soon as they arrive on campus.
He told Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep there was “a sort of Stanford inside Stanford,” where elite students are drawn into an “alternate reality” of excess and access to cut corners.
In the interview, he discusses how Stanford is not just a university but also a pipeline where status and power can matter as much as ideas.
We reached out to Stanford University for comment and have not heard back.
Listen to the interview by clicking play on the blue box above.
The scoreboard shows the results of the women’s singles final match between Iga Swiatek of Poland and Amanda Anisimova of the U.S. at the Wimbledon Tennis Championships in London, Saturday, July 12, 2025.
Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP
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Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP
Fifteen points in tennis? Nice. Thirty, 40 — even better. Advantage — that sounds good. “Love” — that also must be great, right? Well, not quite.
As the French Open rolls on and Serena Williams has announced her return to the sport, maybe you’ve been paying a little more attention to tennis. The sport’s scoring system is notably distinct, and can sometimes be hard to grasp for newcomers. But even tennis aficionados might not know why, or how, “love” became the unmistakable callout for zero points. For this installment of NPR’s Word of the Week, we’re exploring how a word that signifies trailing behind got such a sweet name.
“Love” comes from the heart — or an egg?
It’s hard to pinpoint when the first tennis ball went over the net. Tennis is a derivative of lots of other sports, such as “jeu de paume,” a handball game played in France, said JT Buzanga, the collections manager at the International Tennis Hall of Fame museum.
But tennis became a patented, official sport in 1874, said Steve Flink, a journalist whose tennis coverage got him inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame. It has retained its unique, mysterious scoring system ever since.
“By and large, the original system has held up almost entirely,” Flink said.
The use of “love” goes back to the late 18th century, said Jesse Sheidlower, a lexicographer. But it was used earlier than that in card games such as whist and bridge. Before the term made its way to tennis, the sport favored plain old “nothing,” or “nil,” he said.
Why love in the first place, though? Historians don’t really know for sure, but there are a few theories.
The French could have something to do with it. Some historians believe “love” derives from “l’oeuf,” which means “the egg” in French. Because eggs are shaped like zeros, terms such as “goose egg” and “duck’s egg” have been used in other contexts to mean zero, Sheidlower said.
It’s also possible English speakers mispronounced l’oeuf as “love.” But Sheidlower isn’t convinced that’s the answer.
“It’s the French equivalent of an English expression. But since that expression doesn’t appear in French, the French word wouldn’t have been used,” he said.
To be sure, France has had a lot of influence on tennis culture, Buzanga said. For example, “deuce” or a game tied at 40 points, comes from the French word for “two”: “deux.” But he prefers another prominent theory: that “love” comes from the idiom “for the love of the game.” Even if a player hasn’t scored, it doesn’t matter, because their heart is in it. It’s the theory Sheidlower said is the most plausible, because the idiom was used by the English before tennis was popularized.
Another variation of the “love of the game” theory is that the word could have come from the Dutch “lof,” or “honor” — or the Latin “amare,” meaning “to love,” Flink said.
But if tennis’ “love” doesn’t come from a French word, the theory at least has a French sensibility.
“I think the ‘for the love of the game’ is kind of romantic,” Buzanga said.
“Love” probably isn’t going anywhere
Tennis used to be a sport of leisure. The style of play has changed a lot over the years; players are more athletic and competitive, for instance, Flink said. But the rules of the sport are more steadfast, he said.
“There’s this incredible, enduring respect for tradition in tennis,” he said. “Changes are not made easily.”
There has been one major change in modern history: the tie-break. Matches can go on and on because players have to score two consecutive points to break a deuce, or by two games to break a tied set. But the onset of television meant matches would have to get shorter if the sport wanted to capture a larger audience, Flink said.
Change even came for “love.” An alternative sprouted up in the 1970s, and is still used today: “bagel,” named for its zero shape, Sheidlower said. Novices may say “zero,” and insiders will understand what they mean, but they “will needle them about it,” Flink said.
But “love” still prevails.
“People kind of like it,” Flink said. “It’s different. Why say zero when you can say love?”
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