People Amaze Me

So I went to hear an author talk tonight (Angela Gardner-Davis). She’s pretty impressive. At the moment she has 3 books in publication and a fourth one expected in 2008. *cough*She’salsomywritinginstructor!*cough*cough*

She was talking at my local, favorite, independent, book-store. I love this place and not because it’s around the block from my house. Almost as good as the books, and the visiting authors, are the PEOPLE who fill out the crowd.

I got there early to save some seats in the middle section for my friends. In the last row are 5 orange extra-comfy padded barrel chairs. The rule for these seats is first come, first serve. About 15 minutes before the event began they were all taken. Then in walks this woman and says to someone in a comfy-seat, “Oh, you’re so young, you don’t mind giving up your seat do you? Here you can move one row forward and be that much closer to the front!” And with that she helps the “young lady” OUT OF HER CHAIR – and then calls, “Here Horace! Look there’s one chair left!” Where by this man disengaged himself from a gaggle of other Senior Citizens and trotted over to the comfy chair. I was flabbergasted!

Of course … Mrs. Rudely-Rearrange-the-Seating did not stop with displacing people. Oh no! That would be too much to hope for … perhaps it’s because I turned the evil eye on her for uprooting someone, but my punishment was her choice to sit DIRECTLY.BEHIND.ME. and hawk up phlegm every third or fourth word spoken by the author. It went something like this:

Author: And so I (accchhhhggng) realize in looking back that (accchhhhggng) all of my stories deal with (accchhhhggng) the metamorphose of relationships we go (accchhhhggng) through as adolescents.

Man was it annoying!

I also noticed another woman sitting in front of us, who must be Skeletor’s female cousin. This woman’s face was so gaunt, it looked like a forensic scientist had made a mould of facial bones, wired them together – and then stretched and glued naugahyde over the structure to give a sense of skin. Only he hadn’t done a very good job of fitting the naugahyde to the bones – and elongated creases ran vertically down her face – where you might expect to find dimples on a person with a little plump.

Besides listening to Angela talk about her books, and how the stories came to her, the third best part of the evening was when Dr. Esq (formerly known as Dr. Whiny) showed up! We walked next door for some Whole Food goodness and had a pleasant conversation.

Anyway … that was my night. How was yours?

Ps: It’s cold … I’m going to bed!