Ta da. After quite some time of not blogging, now I am waiting at the airport and finally have time to write, right before I go home and see the fam, who will inevitably hear this all again in just a few hours. Sorry, fam.
Anytime I go to the airport I get myself psyched up for some good people watching, and today was especially fitting. Out here I can take public transportation to the airport, so my people watching adventure began on the train before I even got here. When I got on the train there were these two girls sitting across from me that were speaking some foreign language that I didn't recognize at ALL. Usually I can at least pick up a familiar word or inflection or throat clearing and make a pretty good guess at what people are speaking, but I was at a complete loss this time. One of the girls looked darker, perhaps even Hispanic, but she definitely was not speaking Spanish. And the other girl was very fair. So their looks were not helping at all. I am sitting across from them on the train figuring that I happened to run into these girls from this obscure eastern European country that I've never heard of where they don't have running water and don't have television, and here they are being bombard with all of this flashy American culture. They must be here because it was their lifelong dream to come to the U.S. and Boston seemed like a good place to be, but they don't speak the language so they don't really know what's going on, but they're still having the time of their life as young college students exploring the world... Oh yeah. They couldn't hide anything from me. I totally had them figured out. Well, they got off the train a few stops before me, and I'm thinking to myself, aw, you dear things. Then, as they are literally stepping off the train, one of the girls says, in not only perfect English but in perfect British English, "Excuse me. You look just like Julia Stiles." I was shocked speechless. Not because I look like Julia Stiles (I may have gotten that once or twice before) but because she was speaking in a language I understood about an actress that, as far as I can tell, is by no means any kind of universal icon. It just threw me for such a loop. And I usually don't know how to respond to that comment anyhow, but now especially under such a time crunch because they are stepping off the train and I am in this mental stupor over the whole situation, so I yelled (yelled because they are now off the train, so I must project my voice--this means now the whole train can hear me too) "Thank you!"
Thank you? Seriously? In the past I've tried to come up with creative responses to the Julia Stiles thing, because people are really excited to tell me that they've figured it out (and everyone tells me. I don't understand why in any other situation 3 or 4 people can sit through an entire bus ride facing each other and no one says a word to each other, but for some reason this is totally okay to talk about and it would be a real shame if you didn't tell them they look like someone famous), but in all those responses I've got stored up in my mental arsenal, "Thank you," or anything resembling it really doesn't come up. It's not exactly a compliment. It's just a matter of fact. Like, this isn't something I work on or have strived to become. In my mind, this comment is the equivalent of someone coming up to me and saying, "Were you aware that your hair is brown?" "Oh, thank you ever so much! What an incredible compliment you have given me!" No, no. Thank you is not the appropriate response. But that's what came out, so now everyone who was on that train thinks I am this sad little creature who takes some sort of pathetic pride in identifying herself as someone who mildly resembles a celebrity. That's okay. I can thank all of them too, I'm sure.
Thank you? Seriously? In the past I've tried to come up with creative responses to the Julia Stiles thing, because people are really excited to tell me that they've figured it out (and everyone tells me. I don't understand why in any other situation 3 or 4 people can sit through an entire bus ride facing each other and no one says a word to each other, but for some reason this is totally okay to talk about and it would be a real shame if you didn't tell them they look like someone famous), but in all those responses I've got stored up in my mental arsenal, "Thank you," or anything resembling it really doesn't come up. It's not exactly a compliment. It's just a matter of fact. Like, this isn't something I work on or have strived to become. In my mind, this comment is the equivalent of someone coming up to me and saying, "Were you aware that your hair is brown?" "Oh, thank you ever so much! What an incredible compliment you have given me!" No, no. Thank you is not the appropriate response. But that's what came out, so now everyone who was on that train thinks I am this sad little creature who takes some sort of pathetic pride in identifying herself as someone who mildly resembles a celebrity. That's okay. I can thank all of them too, I'm sure.
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