There's a Sucker Born Every Minute!

This is me, you know, minus the bald head and
surly expression.

So, a few weeks ago I went to a conference for work. It was a conference about ADHD, and, as educational conferences go, it was in a really good location: Washington D.C. Now, my dad goes out of town on business fairly regularly, usually to attend conferences or trainings, and he has gotten to go to the Cayman Islands; Dublin, Ireland; Banff, Canada; and Las Vegas. In the world of education, no one is going to hold a conference in the Venetian Hotel and Casino. Instead, educational conferences end up being in places like Gatlinburg, Tennessee, so that, while you are learning more about teaching you can also get a t-shirt airbrushed with a picture of gun and your name on it.

For most of the conference I did not leave the hotel, which, I might add, was pretty nice as far as the types of hotels I am used to. While I would love to one day stay at the Ritz Carlton, or at some other super-ritzy hotel, I usually stay in the Holiday Inn or the Days Inn, so the Hyatt in Washington D.C. seemed super fancy. My dad went with me, and attended to some business while I went to the conference, and one evening, we both went to dinner with my cousin, Slade, his wife, Katie, and their daughter, Ellie. (That was the only time I left the hotel, other than to walk down the street to eat at a Chili’s). Slade and Katie are super nice, and Ellie is really adorable, so a good time was had by all. I really enjoyed myself on the trip, and getting away from my job for a few days proved to be regenerative.

On Saturday, during the last session before my dad and I were to leave the hotel to return to Atlanta, something really, uh, interesting happened. I must preface this story with a statement about how uncomfortable the chairs were in almost all of the conference sessions. I think that every 30 minutes sitting in one of those chairs probably equated to an hour that I will have to spend with a chiropractor sometime in my future. During the last session, though, I found a way to be more comfortable. There was a table with three chairs behind it in the back of the room. When I sit at a table, there is less pressure on my back to keep me upright, since I can just lean on the table. While we all know I would rather the conference take place in a room fashioned with a huge plush sofa with a waiter who serves all-you-can-eat desserts, the table was the best choice at the time.

I sat down behind said table, and was getting ready to pull out my knitting. I knitted during most of the conference sessions, because they were all lectures, and I like to multitask. I think many of the people in the audience just thought I had ADHD and that knitting was my strategy to stay focused, and I did not tell them otherwise. Just as my hands closed around the knitting needles in my bag, I notice a semi-cute guy who seemed to be approaching the table. He was no George Clooney, but he definitely stood out as a cut above some of the other conference attendees. He was about five feet from the table, when a tiny woman ran up and sat in the chair next to me. Seeing that the chair was now occupied, the guy made his way to the middle of the room and sat in a chair, sans table. The little woman was already one down. I glared at her.

“Hi,” she said. “Can you take notes for me during the session? I have a learning disability, and someone took notes for me during the last session, and it was great.”

I sat there, smiling, like a deer caught in headlights. The woman also had crossed eyes which, in combination with the statement about having a learning disability, made me feel bad for her. Now, I have never known anyone with any type of disability who just walked up to people and announced that they had a disability, so that was kind of weird, but, as a person whose sympathies can be played upon, I agreed to take the notes, nodding yes idiotically, like one of the animatronic creatures in the Monster Plantation at Six Flags Over Georgia. She thanked me and sat down next to me, then began writing in her notebook, which showed me she obviously didn’t have any physical problems with writing.

I never miss out on an opportunity to put a picture of
George Clooney on my blog. I'd take notes for him anytime!

Before I could process the fact that I had just agreed to be this woman’s personal scribe for the next hour and a half, a tall blonde, smiling woman approached the table and sat down in the third chair. The woman appeared to just smile at anyone and anything in her path, almost like someone whose face had been tightened up too much by plastic surgery (Bruce Jenner, anyone?) She and the tiny woman immediately struck up a conversation, even though they appeared not to have ever met before that moment at the table, and the conversation went something like this:

Smiley: You know, I just left during the break and got a Dr. Pepper.

Shorty: I love Dr. Pepper!

Smiley: I could have just gone up to the first floor to get it, but, instead, I went up to the eighteenth floor, because I really love looking down from high places, and I thought, why not go up to the eighteenth floor? It was really great!

Shorty: Really great!

They became such instant buddies that they continued their conversation. In fact, there conversation seemed to be so scintillating that they continued it all the way through the speaker’s lecture, as I sat there next to them, taking notes like an ignoramus. When the tiny woman wasn’t gabbing it up, she was reading a book she brought with her, or she was making to-do lists on the back of her conference handouts while I, like the unfortunate dimwit I proved to be, sat there, writing down for her all of the things she was missing by, you know, NOT LISTENING AT ALL.

When I told my family this story at dinner one night, my mom sat there, drawing an S on her chest, and mouthing the word “sucker” to me, complete with the dramatic facial expressions normally only seen in silent films. I know I should probably try to defend my idiocy in some way, but I can’t. I am, indeed, a sucker!

Sucker image courtesy of http://novabrowningrutherford.com/5-ways-to-spot-a-sucker/

George Clooney image courtesy of http://www.50shadesofage.com/tag/george-clooney/