Cult of Jef

I don’t find myself par­tic­u­larly inter­est­ing, so it always takes me off guard when I share a per­sonal anec­dote that catches other people’s atten­tion.  Oth­ers seem to lead much more fas­ci­nat­ing lives: their child plays drums in a pre-school rock ‘n’ roll band; they’ve trav­eled to Ams­ter­dam and con­sumed the world’s largest hash brownie; or have ghost-written Illit­er­acy for Dum­mies.

For exam­ple, last night I was out at a local steak­house with some les­bian friends–which was curi­ous, since they’re both vegetarians–and the sub­ject of close encoun­ters of the celebrity kind came up.

Now I have a dis­pro­por­tion­ate amount of les­bian friends, so they swapped sto­ries about ath­letes that I’d never heard of before.  Well, I did actu­ally know whom Patty was refer­ring to when she recounted acci­den­tally knock­ing Hank Aaron’s Chick-fil-A sand­wich out of his hand at the air­port with her carryon.

“Have you ever had a close encounter with a celebrity, Jef?” Sal asked?

I struck a thought­ful pose, then said, “When I was in col­lege, I worked as a cashier at a Tar­get store in Fort Worth.  One day, Mar­tina Navar­tilova came through my lane and bought tam­pons.”  Cue forks clank­ing against plates, glasses slam­ming on the table, and a wee les­bian chok­ing on a cream-cheese-stuffed-deep-fried-jalapeno.

“What was she doing in Texas?” Patty asked.

Sal rolled her eyes.  “That’s when she was liv­ing with Judy Nel­son, remember?”

Patty nod­ded, then leaned across the table.  “Give us details!”

My eyes tilted up, as if yes­ter­year were float­ing in the trees above the out­door heater.  “I was work­ing the express lane–you know, 10 items or less–and Mar­tina swag­gered up and plopped a box of Kotex on my orange counter.”

“Did you ask for her auto­graph?” Sal asked.

“What was I going to ask her to sign?  A tam­pon?” I asked.  “Besides, I’ve always imag­ined that celebri­ties hate it when peo­ple act weird around them, so I just played it cool.  I touch-keyed the depart­ment code and item num­ber into my reg­is­ter and told her how much her tam­pons were with tax.”

“I would have com­pletely told her how much I respected her as a ten­nis player,” Patty said, “and asked her to tat­too her sig­na­ture on my fore­arm with a Bic pen.”

“What method of pay­ment did she use?” Sal asked.

My eye­brows knit together.  Typ­i­cally, middle-class white women paid by check, blue-collar men paid cash, and Asian, Mid­dle East­ern, and Indian peo­ple paid by credit card, usu­ally Dis­cover.   How­ever, I only had one female Wim­bel­don cham­pion come through my lane, so I had lim­ited expe­ri­ence.  “I guess she must have paid by cash, since it was the express lane.  I really can’t remember.”

“What did the cus­tomers do?”

I shook my head.  “They stared at her and acted goofy.  I just wanted to shout at them, ‘You know, she bleeds just like you!’ but con­sid­er­ing her pur­chase, it seemed a bit awkward.”

The les­bians ate this up and soon immersed them­selves in a frenzy of ten­nis talk, as well as how cool it is that Mar­tina and Chris Evert are best friends, while I watched with amusement.

I sup­pose if Mar­tina hadn’t lit the fire of their inter­est so much, I would have retold the story of how Grace Jones almost ran over me with her lim­ou­sine, but that’s another story for another day.

Have you had a close encounter of the celebrity kind?  If so, please leave a com­ment and tell me about it.