My friends and I tend to talk about celebrities quite often, even though the ones we talk about tend to not be the ones you see written about in tabloids. A lot of my friends are involved in the music industry and I’m also passionately involved with music, so we tend to gossip and share our encounters with our favorite bands rather than talk about what Hollywood starlet was busted for drugs. However, most of my friends have had their own strange experiences meeting random celebrities in odd encounters – my friend Carla met Nicolas Cage on a plane, the mother of my friend Natalie met Ozzy Osbourne in an elevator – but I’ve heard all of their stories before and they’ve heard all of my brushes with fame in the past as well.
Having already worn out all of my good stories with my friends, I decided I would bring up the topic instead with my coworkers at my two jobs, the Barnes & Noble on Penn’s campus and in Drexel’s Dragon Card Office. I usually only communicate with my co-workers on matters related to work, so I thought that bringing up a topic like this would be a good change of pace and it would be especially interesting to see their reactions to these brushes with fame. I thought I could find out some good stories from my co-workers, and I was not disappointed with the results, as you’ll see in the following paragraphs.
While I was stuck manning the information desk at Barnes & Noble on Monday night with a few of my fellow employees, I thought it was as good a time as any to bring up brushes with fame. One of my co-workers, Roberta, a talkative, excitable fellow college student, was talking about the new movies she wanted to see and how much she loved Adam Brody (from ‘The OC’ and the new movie ‘In The Land of Women’). As we were already on the topic of famous people, I thought it was an appropriate time to bring up our own experiences with celebrities.
I brought up the subject by wondering out loud what celebrities everyone would most like to meet, interjecting how I had met Luke Perry (from ‘Beverly Hills 90210’ fame) when I was nine years old walking with my grandmother in downtown Philadelphia, a sad but true story. The conversation up until that point was pretty much centered around one person talking, usually Roberta, as she’s particularly chatty at any given time, but as soon as I brought up this topic, more people began to chime into the chatter. Another one of my co-workers, Genny, a bookish woman in her late twenties, had a look of pure excitement on her face as she made me explain my entire encounter with Luke Perry, saying how much she loved his show when she was younger, that she grew up with a pin-up of him on her bedroom wall.
After I had broken the ice with my Luke Perry story, my co-workers began to share their own personal encounters with celebrities, trying to see who had the most outrageous experience. Genny shared that she had attended the same high school as Chelsea Clinton but that she never really talked to her because Chelsea was three years younger than she was at the time, so it didn’t really affect her. Roberta said that she had never really met any celebrities, but while she was studying abroad in Spain, she had stayed in the same hotel as some players for the Sixers and they had invited her back to her hotel room. Genny and I gave her a suspicious look (because Roberta is the kind of person who would actually take basketball players up on such an offer), but she said that she declined their offer and the entire experience kind of creeped her out.
One of our supervisors, Jeanne, an older, matronly sort of woman, walked over to the counter to see what all of the commotion was about, as we were becoming a loud and animated bunch. We explained how we were discussing celebrities we had met and Jeanne, usually reserved and a bit crotchety, excitedly told us the story of how she had met Sylvester Stallone in a restaurant and how he was a bastard to her and her husband because they interrupted him for an autograph for their son. She shared that she hadn’t seen one of his movies since because he was so horrible to them.
As you can see, this was a hot topic at work for the duration of the night. Whereas before the topic of brushes with fame was brought up, our conversation was kind of dry and work-related, as soon as I mentioned my own personal experience, everyone else seemed to open up and share their own stories, making the night pass much quicker because we were actually having fun at work for once. Although we soon ran out of stories of our own to share, we then moved on to sharing stories of our friends and family members meeting celebrities, and then the conversation just went on from there, getting further away from our original topic. The mere mention of celebrities broke the ice and loosened up the mood in the normally staid bookstore that night.
Due to the incredible response I got from my co-workers at Barnes & Noble, I thought I would share the same story with my co-workers at the Dragon Card office to see their reactions and to see if they would produce the same outpouring of personal tales as the others. Everyone, except the managers, at the Dragon Card Office is within the same age range – 19 to 21 – so we all know a lot of the same celebrities and there isn’t the same generation gap that exists at Barnes & Noble, where employees are of all ages and only three of my co-workers are actually students. On my shift Tuesday morning, during a rather dull period in the mid-morning when most students aren’t even awake, I made my move.
Before I brought up my whole “meeting Luke Perry” story, the entire office was dead – the four student employees, including myself, were sitting in front of the computers surfing the internet and not speaking, whereas the head manager, Alicia, who’s slightly older than the students, was sitting at her computer listening to gospel music. I cleared my throat and said that I was wondering if anyone had ever met any celebrities. I explained how I met Luke Perry and everyone giggled and turned to look at me, expecting me to elaborate on my story.
After I had told every little detail, I asked again if any of them had ever had any similar brushes with fame. Laura, a bubbly nursing major to my left, said that she had met a player on the New England Patriots when she lived in Massachusetts and babysat for the player’s daughter a couple of times (although the name of the player eludes me right now). Similarly, Katie, a quiet sophomore engineering major, said that she had met a Sixers player when she was a lot younger – maybe six or seven years old – but she couldn’t remember his name, just that he was very tall and not very friendly. Natalie, a senior culinary arts major who I complain about schoolwork with, said that she had never directly interacted with a celebrity, although she did once see the rapper Busta Rhymes in a Foot Locker store in New York City. Meanwhile, Alicia said that she met the R&B artist Tyrese a few years ago while on vacation in the Bahamas when the two were staying at the same hotel. They all said their encounters with these celebrities were brief and didn’t really have any major affect on their lives, but they made for good stories to tell to their friends.
We all laughed about how random the celebrity meetings had been, especially because none of the people we had met were really big celebrities at the time. After we finished talking about our own brushes with fame, Laura changed the subject to a celebrity gossip site she normally reads, sharing the noteworthy stories from the past few days. We chatted away for the rest of my shift, pausing only to help customers that came into the office, although sometimes the customers would overhear our celebrity discussions and chime in with their own two cents’ worth. The mood in the office really lightened up and we all learned a little bit more about one another than we had known in the past.
As you can see from the two cases presented above, it would appear as though everyone has had some sort of random brush with fame in their lives. This may not be the norm outside of major cities like Philadelphia, but everyone I spoke to had met or at least seen a celebrity in public and had a story to tell about it. By sharing these stories, I got to learn a little bit more about the people I worked with and also about their views on fame and celebrity, like how Jeanne thought that Sylvester Stallone was a horrible person. I think sharing such stories is entertaining and can help to break the ice in environments where there’s not much conversation, like in the workplace. By bringing up such a subject, the conversations loosened and everyone got a few laughs and seemed generally entertained for at least a few minutes, which is really all you can ask for in everyday life.
