A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes

Last week, as I drove home from Arizona, I was playing around with thoughts in my head, as one often does on long road trips, and I asked myself the following question:  If I could eat dinner with any celebrity/person in the world, who would it be?  It's the type of question, you ask at dinner parties, prom dates, or on long car trips.  I'm usually fantastically bad at these questions.  I can never decide, or I can never think of anyone who would be all that interesting in the setting of a restaurant.  Celebrity crushes?  I don't want to go to dinner with Gene Kelly; I want to see him dance!  Many of the people I'd want to meet are long since dead anyway.  Jane Austen, long gone.  Einstein or Mark Twain or Winston Churchill?  All gone.  There are some fictional characters I'd like to meet (DOCTOR WHO), but that's stretching the rules of the question a bit, don't you think?

Julian McMahon, my first celebrity crush.  I discovered him in high school,
and Di taped pictures of him all over the outside of her binder.
It's too bad he's nearer my mother's age than mine.
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But, on that long drive, I finally came up with an answer.  If I could pick anyone to have dinner with in real life, real time, not past, future, or fiction, I would pick Ira Glass.  I've already mentioned my love for This American Life, and the radio show continues to delight, impress, and intrigue.  Then, the other day, I missed a call from my long time best friend (y'know, since fifth grade or so), Di.  I listened to her message, but it came out somewhat garbled.  She said something about winning tickets to something on Saturday night, and she was inviting me to go with her, but I couldn't quite catch what it was she had won tickets to.  However, a girls' night out with Di is always a good thing, so I called her back forthwith and left her a message assuring her that I'd love to go, and asking her what it was we were going to.  Then I checked facebook, and found out that what she had one tickets to was Ira Glass's presentation at Kingsbury Hall!  I wigged out something fierce.  I've been speaking in exclamation points all week.  I was going to get to see him in real life!  Actually see him talk and move and express, not just hear his voice on the radio.  Then, Friday, Di told me that because she'd won the tickets through KUER, we were invited to the pre-show reception (with cupcakes! I couldn't eat them, though: it's a safe bet they weren't vegan).  At that pre-show reception there would probably be some KUER people, and a slight possibility of IRA GLASS being there HIMSELF.

So Saturday evening I cut my climbing with friends short and rushed up to Di's house.  We drove from there to the U of U campus and soon found ourselves climbing the steps of Kinsbury Hall.  Then we climbed up to the second floor, found our names on the exclusive list, and waltzed into the reception.  At the door there was a basket of "Ira Glasses," for us to put on to be more like our hero.

Ira Glass glasses

As we went past the red curtain, we found ourselves only about five feet away from Ira Glass!!!!  And sure enough, he was talking!  And his voice was coming from his own mouth, clear and natural, not through a microphone or a speaker or a a television!  He was being gracious and funny about the fact that before he walked in people were taking pictures with a cardboard cutout of him.

Holy moly it's Ira Freakin' Glass!!

It's cardboard Ira!  And real Ira's in the background!  He looks just like himself!

I was far too shy to ask for a picture with him, but luckily, Di was much more bold.  She spoke up right away and asked if she could take a picture of us.  He graciously agreed.  Pardon me if I get a little overenthusiastic with my exclamation points.  He shook my hand!  He said it was nice to meet me!  He stood still for a picture with me!

In my head I was thinking, "Don't be a dork: it's Ira Glass!
Don't be a dork! Don't be a dork!  Holy cow it's Ira Glass!!"

There are so many things I want to say about the lecture/show/evening itself I want to say, but they don't really fit together into a comprehensive paragraph.  I want to tell you about how funny Ira was on stage, how when he sneezed and the stage hands couldn't get him a tissue, a lady in the front row stood up and handed him one.  So he said he'd pay her back and stopped the show as he whisked a red balloon from his jacket pocket and proceeded to tie a balloon animal and give it to her.  I want to tell you the stories he told, the points about human nature he made.  His overall message for the evening was about stories, their structure, and their role in our society and our psyche.  I already knew stories were powerful, I use them daily as a teacher.  I tell stories all day long.  I tell stories about my life, about history, from literature, from mythology, when I can I even turn grammar into a story.  I think my job would be impossible without stories.  Often, I think our society and our lives would be impossible without stories.  Stories are how we learn, what we remember, and what we build our lives out of.

If someday I die and there are no names of children to engrave on the back of my tombstone, or if there's not room for the poem I want there (John Donne, Holy Sonnet X), and if I'm not cremated and scattered from the top of Angel's Landing in Zion, if all that could be said of me and carved into stone at the end of my life was, "She was a great storyteller," I would rest as easy under that simple inscription as the pharaohs do in their gold encrusted tombs, engraved all about with their glorious deeds and accomplishments.  If no one can think of anything better to say about me when I'm gone, I'd be perfectly happy with that.  If you can't write the usual "loving wife, mother, and grandmother" on my tomb, please simply put "Storyteller" under my name instead.