I Never Wanted to Be a Star: Part 1

So. I was on television last week.

It was like this: I was on the children’s info desk at work last Wednesday, and the phone rang, and I answered it cause that's my job, and it was this guy asking for my sort-of-boss, but she was in the program room leading a story time, so I asked if I could try to answer his question, and he said actually he was calling on behalf of this local morning news show about having her come in the next morning to talk about this contest she’s running that has to do with teens and books.

I took his number and ran into the program room at the story time snack break to tell her, and she looked all panicked and pointed at me and said, “You! You do it!” and after some more back-and-forth, that’s what happened.

I meant to tell more people before I went on, but 1) I was at work and on the desk until 9:00 that night, and 2) I had to gather up some books to show and tell on the air, and in a genre about which I only have the barest level of surface knowledge, so even though the desk was quiet I was kept busy scurrying around and scanning back covers, and 3) it was local television with no streaming website so no one outside the Vancouver area could see it anyway, and 4) I was beset with a steadily increasing level of panic that OMIGOD I’M GOING TO HAVE TO TALK ABOUT SOMETHING ON LIVE TELEVISION and over the course of the evening became convinced that I was about to make a total and utter fool of myself, so it seemed somewhat self-destructive to actually ADVERTISE that eventuality.

Thursday morning I got up at 6ish, and left in the dark of early morning with my box o’ books and my contest fliers and my change of shirt just in case the one I was wearing wasn’t right, and my punk sock puppet that I made for practice for the teen program I’m doing next month (long story, another time), just in case I got a chance to show it off, and set off for the TV studio on the edge of downtown. And I even managed to avoid most of the worst early rush-hour traffic and to only make one wrong turn, and showed up only ten minutes late. (I figured that wasn’t a big deal and that they’d told me a time much earlier than when I’d actually go on, which was in fact the case.)

And after I’d found parking and put money in the meter, I schlepped my box o’ books around the corner to the front door and eep! The show! It was happening right in the lobby of the building! They hadn’t told me that. So I walked right past the hosts on the other side of the plate glass, and through the door and up to the reception desk very quietly, and checked in very quietly trying not to rustle my coat, and sat down in the lobby chairs waiting for someone to usher me to the green room, and then I got thirsty and noticed the water cooler over by the reception desk and tiptoed up to get some water and GLUG GLUG GLUG went the cooler right when they were running a tape of James Earl Jones’s voice.

Crap.

Tomorrow: The Green Room, Which Is Not Green