I met Sherman Alexie!
Yesterday was awesome! Started out slow; I didn't get up until almost 10:15 and I had to be at the world cultures building at 11 to sell advance tickets to Sherman Alexie's lecture that night. I made it. About 15 minutes late, but I made it. Dr. Permenter didn't seem to care.
Ticket-selling wasn't real exciting, but it was kind of relaxing just sitting there talking to Dana for a couple hours and not doing much of anything. Dr. McNeill came by and told us a funny story. Apparently, they're having a problem with a wasp infestation in the English dept. faculty offices, so they called an exterminator. These guys come in last week in the middle of the day with their Ghostbuster packs on and start spraying. Well, Dr. White (a Native American) is in his office enjoying a nice cup of tea while he's grading papers, and he looks up and sees these guys spraying pesticide all over the place. So he slapped his hand over his cup of tea and went running out of the office. And the wasps are still there. So the joke in the English dept. now is that they must have been spraying for Indians.
But I went to class yesterday afternoon, took a test I hadn't studied for (as usual), and went back to my apartment. Worked on my history paper a little bit and then I got ready for dinner.
Got to dinner early, and I was the first one there, so I started scouting out the name cards on the table to see where I'd be sitting. I found Sherman Alexie's name card, and, low and behold, my card was at the seat right next to him! That's when I got nervous. I just knew I was going to do or say something stupid. Thank God I didn't. I was real cool when I met him (he's a lot taller than I expected), and I was fine until they served the salads. There were two HUGE cherry tomatoes on it. I love tomatoes, but there's really no polite way to eat a cherry tomato. I almost didn't eat them because I figured one of two things would happen:
1. I'd pop the whole thing in my mouth, and just as I did, Sherman would ask me something, and I would turn to answer and squirt him with tomato juice and seeds, or,
2. I'd attempt to cut the tomatoes in half, lose control of the tomato, which would shoot off my plate and hit him in the side of the head.
I made sure I stabbed my fork into the tomatoes real well before cutting.
Sherman was so funny! He comes across as real arrogant if you read transcripts of his interviews, but he's really funny and really, really nice. We quoted Pink Floyd in unison without meaning to. He was making fun of how white Butler County is. And it is. There is zero cultural diversity here.
His speech was hysterical! I can't remember the last time I laughed that hard. I needed it, too. He spoke for an hour and fifteen minutes, then he answered questions for another 45 minutes, and then he signed books. It was 10:45 before I got home last night.
For great Sherman Alexie quotes of the evening, see my next post.
Ticket-selling wasn't real exciting, but it was kind of relaxing just sitting there talking to Dana for a couple hours and not doing much of anything. Dr. McNeill came by and told us a funny story. Apparently, they're having a problem with a wasp infestation in the English dept. faculty offices, so they called an exterminator. These guys come in last week in the middle of the day with their Ghostbuster packs on and start spraying. Well, Dr. White (a Native American) is in his office enjoying a nice cup of tea while he's grading papers, and he looks up and sees these guys spraying pesticide all over the place. So he slapped his hand over his cup of tea and went running out of the office. And the wasps are still there. So the joke in the English dept. now is that they must have been spraying for Indians.
But I went to class yesterday afternoon, took a test I hadn't studied for (as usual), and went back to my apartment. Worked on my history paper a little bit and then I got ready for dinner.
Got to dinner early, and I was the first one there, so I started scouting out the name cards on the table to see where I'd be sitting. I found Sherman Alexie's name card, and, low and behold, my card was at the seat right next to him! That's when I got nervous. I just knew I was going to do or say something stupid. Thank God I didn't. I was real cool when I met him (he's a lot taller than I expected), and I was fine until they served the salads. There were two HUGE cherry tomatoes on it. I love tomatoes, but there's really no polite way to eat a cherry tomato. I almost didn't eat them because I figured one of two things would happen:
1. I'd pop the whole thing in my mouth, and just as I did, Sherman would ask me something, and I would turn to answer and squirt him with tomato juice and seeds, or,
2. I'd attempt to cut the tomatoes in half, lose control of the tomato, which would shoot off my plate and hit him in the side of the head.
I made sure I stabbed my fork into the tomatoes real well before cutting.
Sherman was so funny! He comes across as real arrogant if you read transcripts of his interviews, but he's really funny and really, really nice. We quoted Pink Floyd in unison without meaning to. He was making fun of how white Butler County is. And it is. There is zero cultural diversity here.
His speech was hysterical! I can't remember the last time I laughed that hard. I needed it, too. He spoke for an hour and fifteen minutes, then he answered questions for another 45 minutes, and then he signed books. It was 10:45 before I got home last night.
For great Sherman Alexie quotes of the evening, see my next post.