Superpowers and the lack thereof
Oct. 2nd, 2003 12:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
grammargirl(This was mostly written last night, but I got all distracted and didn't post it.)
I don't know why, but one of my superpowers seems to be that I have spectacularly good luck at author signings.
Terry Pratchett was signing at Borders tonight. My mom was supposed to mail me my beat-up copy of Small Gods but the envelope showed up today with two pieces of mail but no book inside--we think maybe it fell out en route or something. Instead, I grabbed my copy of Good Omens, bought a copy of Hogfather to get signed for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
adam_oddfellow (and a copy of Cryptonomicon for me--Neal Stephenson is signing tomorrow, woo! It's like a geek's paradise!), and made it upstairs about five minutes before Terry Pratchett was supposed to show up.
The place was packed. All the chairs were full, people were standing in the back and around the sides, straining their necks to see. Just for the hell of it I made my way through the crowd and wandered around to the front--and there, right in front and slightly off to the side, was a perfect Melanie-sized spot on the floor, which I promptly snagged. There's no reason that spot should have been there--there were even people standing right by it, and any one of them could have taken it--but there it was, for that is my superpower.
So anyway, he talked for a while, this cute little British man with a slight speech impediment, about writing and loneliness and, of course, Harry Potter. Eventually he announced that he'd start signing books, and because Borders doesn't organize signings very well, there was this huge rush to get in line and in the resulting traffic jam, I couldn't get through to the back of the line. So I just kind of inched over and merged with the front of the line, and voila! I was one of the first dozen or so people to get my stuff signed. I was through the line and out the door in less than fifteen minutes.
This kind of thing happens to me all the time. It's a superpower, I tells ya.
...a superpower that apparently completely fails to extend to boys. There was this utterly adorable guy sitting on the floor next to me at the reading, with glasses and cute literary-college-boy facial hair, and I was doing a pretty decent job of making eye contact and smiling at him, because hey, you never know where you're going to meet the One, and if nothing else I knew he had good taste in books... and then the cute girl sitting between us reached over and took his hand, and I sighed and went back to listening to Terry Pratchett. This is the story of my life.
I don't know why, but one of my superpowers seems to be that I have spectacularly good luck at author signings.
Terry Pratchett was signing at Borders tonight. My mom was supposed to mail me my beat-up copy of Small Gods but the envelope showed up today with two pieces of mail but no book inside--we think maybe it fell out en route or something. Instead, I grabbed my copy of Good Omens, bought a copy of Hogfather to get signed for
adam_oddfellow (and a copy of Cryptonomicon for me--Neal Stephenson is signing tomorrow, woo! It's like a geek's paradise!), and made it upstairs about five minutes before Terry Pratchett was supposed to show up. The place was packed. All the chairs were full, people were standing in the back and around the sides, straining their necks to see. Just for the hell of it I made my way through the crowd and wandered around to the front--and there, right in front and slightly off to the side, was a perfect Melanie-sized spot on the floor, which I promptly snagged. There's no reason that spot should have been there--there were even people standing right by it, and any one of them could have taken it--but there it was, for that is my superpower.
So anyway, he talked for a while, this cute little British man with a slight speech impediment, about writing and loneliness and, of course, Harry Potter. Eventually he announced that he'd start signing books, and because Borders doesn't organize signings very well, there was this huge rush to get in line and in the resulting traffic jam, I couldn't get through to the back of the line. So I just kind of inched over and merged with the front of the line, and voila! I was one of the first dozen or so people to get my stuff signed. I was through the line and out the door in less than fifteen minutes.
This kind of thing happens to me all the time. It's a superpower, I tells ya.
...a superpower that apparently completely fails to extend to boys. There was this utterly adorable guy sitting on the floor next to me at the reading, with glasses and cute literary-college-boy facial hair, and I was doing a pretty decent job of making eye contact and smiling at him, because hey, you never know where you're going to meet the One, and if nothing else I knew he had good taste in books... and then the cute girl sitting between us reached over and took his hand, and I sighed and went back to listening to Terry Pratchett. This is the story of my life.
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no subject
Date: 2003-10-02 10:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-10-02 03:13 pm (UTC)Small Gods was awesome, but I think Soul Music was more entertaining. And Hogfather was hilarious.
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Date: 2003-10-02 09:45 pm (UTC)