Scholarship Girl

I spent yesterday in the grand ballroom of the Long Beach Convention Center with some very literary women. While it's always refreshing to be in a room of people who share my love of reading, I tend to get a little cynical at all-women events. As in, I refuse to give in to anyone who attempts to girl-bond with me over womanly subjects. I want to gag rather than laugh at the jokes about how great women are. I shun all things "cute." I roll my eyes at everyone cooing, "Aww" when one of the speakers mentions she has a new baby. I can't decide whether that makes me a good feminist or just a bad person.

Did I mention that there were about 1,000 women in this room? A loooot of estrogen.

I was one of five "student guests" at the event. This involved wearing a nametag with a red ribbon that had "scholarship" printed on it, which meant I was there, courtesy of the CSULB English Department.

During break, when many of the other ladies-who-literary were drinking wine, I went outside to get some air and a homeless man came up to me. He opened his mouth, then looked at my chest (on which the "scholarship" ribbon was displayed). His whole body shifted and he suddenly looked sassy instead of squinty. With a big, flirty smile, he said, "Hey, what's up girl?" Never has a mere nametag been so instrumental in getting holla-ed at.

I also sat next to one of the featured authors, Elizabeth Gaffney, which was fun and a little nerve-wracking at the same time. Once I was introduced to her, I was immediately wetting my pants trying to think of intelligent yet funny comments while also attempting to look cooly nonchalant, like the people in casino commercials. But unfortunately, that didn't work out so well. Note to self: When you try to impress someone by trying not to look like you're thinking too hard, you often give up thinking entirely and allow weird comments fly out of your mouth. If only I had the option of a five second delay so I could bleep out entire sentences. After telling Elizabeth about myself (in retrospect, TMI), I asked her if she was nervous about speaking. Now obviously, this was just my own inner monologue emerging, but she sort of smiled and then, politely answered the question. That was very nice of her.

That was just a microcosm of my day. I love the word microcosm. That's one you don't get to use too often. And fisticuffs.

An unrelated bit of news: Last week, when I was in Felipe's with Russ and his classmates eating lunch, we saw a group of ACTUAL "Cheery Red Tomatoes." It was incredible. They had the red hats and everything. One of them even had on a crosstitched nametag: "Red Hat - Red Hot - My name is Estelle."