So Cool

I have reason to believe I matter in this world: My brother has passed some of the world’s most powerful people in his workplace hallways and even watched a movie with the son of a man who was on the cover of Newsweek. M has lived and sung with the daughter of the founder of a prominent, internationally-renowned organization. My mom–herself a published author–volunteers with a librarian who occasionally works for a national television network; at Obama’s inauguration she confronted a man she didn’t recognize as belonging at the network’s tent. She asked for his name; “General Colin Powell,” he replied. “I’m supposed to be here for an interview.”

It’s tempting to try to make such peripheral linkages sound glamorous–which they do, right?–but when I observe other adults’ dreamy delusions about fame, I generally heave a sigh of inward groaning.

Like earlier this school year, when the head of my school’s English department came into my room all flustered and excited because the local author of the book that her students had been blogging about had–ohmygosh–left a comment for the class. You’d have thought that her brush with a real author was an intense religious experience, she was so solidly on cloud nine. She continued communicating with the author, and he ended up coming over from his neighboring town to eat breakfast with the teachers’ book club.

Or like over Christmas, when I set up a CD player and display to sell M’s and my CD during the faculty craft sale. No one bought a CD, but I received many fine compliments including one teacher’s emphatic statement, “If I had that kind of talent I sure wouldn’t be teaching!” Never mind that our “CD release” materialized only because we had some money and felt like making an album even though we knew it would probably never pay itself off, especially since our marketing venues are limited and include teachers’ lounges.

And just yesterday another author came to our school to speak to seventh graders about one of her books. Our library had been featuring the book without anyone knowing that the author just so happened to be the aunt of our guidance counselor–until the guidance counselor one day walked through the library, saw the book, told the librarian of her familial connection, and helped arrange for yesterday’s visit.

The breakfast book club met with the author before the day began to discuss her book and generally rub shoulders with a published, renowned person. I’d just finished reading the book to all of my students and thought that showing up with a coffee cake would be hospitable of me, so I’d come early, as had the guidance counselor and a number of English teachers including the department head, predictably jittery-tickled at the occasion’s notability.

But even her excitement paled next to that of the librarian, who seemed almost beside herself with the glamor of the moment. “I just think it would be so cool,” she said rather enviously to the guidance counselor and the rest of us as we all sat around the table, “to be related to someone who’s so famous.”

We sat quietly for a bit, there with the published author, all of us soaking up the pure reverie of the moment.