Semi-Close Encounters

Before I start, I’d like to say that I love getting comments, and I always felt that as long as it did not use offensive language or reveal my secret identity, I would publish any comment. I mean, I allowed the post on people having four dogs being crazy, and I certainly don’t agree with that.

Anyway, I found a new exception. I had two comments tonight and one was a page long discourse on karma. I’m sorry, that’s just too long. It’s not that I don’t believe in Buddhism; I don't, but that doesn’t hamper my enjoyment of the karmic exploration in "My Name is Earl". It’s not that I didn’t get the connection (maybe because I felt good about pulling Jason’s hair?). No, it was just too long. A comment should be no more than a few sentences. However, if you have your own blog with a relevant topic, I might be up to posting a link.

Now that we have that settled, it also occurs to me that a throwaway reference in the Bodyguard could have led to one of three different reactions:

“I knew Melissa because she was dating Aaron, who had the locker next to mine and whom I liked, even though he was a year younger than me and a drug dealer.”

1. (For those who knew me then.) Either “I remember him!” or “I don’t remember him.”

2. (For those who knew me in high school.) Aaron was a drug dealer?

3. (For those who met me later.) You liked a drug dealer?

And yes, I like liked him, not just liked him. For the first group, hey, if you want to wax nostalgic, give me a call. I liked a lot of boys in ninth grade—this could last for hours!

Second group, obviously it was not that Aaron. I mean, it’s no Kevin, Scott, or Jason, but I have known several Aarons.

Third, of course I did. His parents didn’t pay him very much attention, and it seemed obvious to me that his girlfriend only liked him for the things he bought her, and that he did not realize it. He easily had my sympathy that way, and since he was good-looking it was a shoo-in. Please refer back to “I liked a lot of boys in ninth grade.”

At this point, some of you may have words like co-dependent, over-function, and obvious self-esteem issues going through your mind now. What can I say? You’re absolutely right, at least in that context. I have grown quite a bit since then. We could do a multi-part series on my romantic history, and it may happen at some time (the horror!), but this is not that time.

Part of my over functioning is that I do like to get other people together, and so I have developed a matchmaking program, and I am always looking for new getting to know you questions and things like that.

One that has always stymied me is “Who is the most famous person you have ever met?”

When put on the spot, I go blank, and can only think of really lame things like when both gubernatorial candidates came to speak to us at Girl’s State (not because of that, but because of their existing positions), or that cousin of the Jets or the Marie Osmond’s ex-nanny. Maybe it was the time I helped Alaa Abdelnaby (former Trail Blazer, back when I liked them) get backstage entrance into the Memorial Coliseum and hitchhiked past security with him. Couldn’t I do better than that?

As it happens, I can. This will be a three part series on my encounters with the famous, maybe not so rich, and writing about them will burn the incidents into my memory so that I will be able to answer when asked.

The first two will just be brief encounters in autograph lines so I will treat them in the same posting. The first one occurred when I was about ten.

Most of my family is really into airplanes, and I spent a lot of time being dragged to air shows. I am afraid they bored me. Essentially, you are sitting in the hot sun waiting for planes to fly by, and no matter how big the name is and how flashy they are, there is a certain sameness to them.

At one show, Pappy Boyington happened to be there, and you could get his autograph. We did watch “Baa Baa Black Sheep”, so I knew the name, and it was kind of amazing to me that he was there. This was someone out of history, and even though World War II isn’t really that long ago (even more so twenty-two years ago) I was impressed. I did not know he was from Washington (I’m pretty sure this was at Painefield in Everett) so it was just really cool and I was determined to get his autograph.

Unfortunately, I did not have anything good for him to autograph, so I waited in line with a pretty pathetic scrap of paper. When I got up there he and his wife were really nice and they thought they could do better than that. They rummaged around and came up with a copy of the poem “High Flight” with a picture of clouds and a plane, and he autographed that for me.

Well of course he completely won my heart right there and then. For all I know, he had a whole box of the poems, but it didn’t matter. They extended themselves for this insignificant kid, and it made me feel great. And it is such a great poem too. I had never heard of it before, but it became one of my favorites, on its own merits and because of the memory.

The next event happened in college. One thing that was wonderful about college was that there are always guest speakers and symposia and all sorts of things going on that you could attend. Cultural critic and essayist Stanley Crouch came for one presentation on campus, and then he had a separate appearance with Wynton Marsalis at the Hult Center where they were doing sort of a panel discussion. Wynton also was going to be doing a concert on another night, but there was a charge for the concert and the discussion was free. I could usually only go to free things.

Anyway, I attended, and afterwards you could talk to them and get autographs, and I had brought a flyer from campus that mentioned both events but had a picture of Stanley. It just worked out that the line got me to Wynton first, and I guess he had not seen the flyer from anything else because he laughed and said, “Stanley, she’s got your picture.”

I suppose in most cases, Wynton would be the headliner, but that’s just how it worked out. Anyway, they were both great as well, and the discussions were interesting.

I do have some closer encounters with even more famous people, but I will just throw out some more shameless name-dropping. As to people you would only know because of church, I have met Jacob De Jager, Jeffrey R. Holland, Joseph B. Wirthlin, Gary Bednar, Mary Ellen Edmunds, Kenneth Cope, and John Bytheway.

From college, I also listened to Ken Kesey introduce Jerry Brown at a political rally, and after attending a couple of events with Emery Barnes, I interviewed him for the history department newsletter. I had an alumni column, and he was a U of O history major. When he came to speak he was one of the first black politicians elected to Canadian legislative office, as well as the first popularly elected speaker of the house.

On the local scene, I once sat in front of Vera Katz at the ballet, and behind Jonathan Nicholas, local columnist, at the Drammys. Two guys I know from high school, Ted Douglass and Andy Buzan founded a local comedy troupe and have appeared in commercials. At Tony & Tina’s Wedding, Tony kissed me on the cheek.

Finally, those two candidates were Barbara Roberts, who became Oregon’s first woman governor, and Dave Frohnmayer, who became president of the University of Oregon so I saw him on campus all the time.

And I would just like to go on the record as saying I have never stalked any of them.