The Sunday Musician

Through the Big Church job I met some really great people, like my friend Cort, who wrote music like some people write grocery lists. One year he wrote a one-act piece, a musical drama, which we performed at a thousand-dollars-a-plate fundraiser. A lot of local celebrities were there, and I got to meet one of them.

I needed to say Something Important. That’s what I was thinking as I stood face to face and shook the hand of Suzy Anchorperson, the local newscaster. For 20 years she’d been bringing the news into my life – important stuff, the news. And now I was looking her in the eye, and trying to say Something Important. And I was not up to the task.

Some people seem completely at ease meeting celebrities, and I hate those people. I stumble exquisitely through every near-encounter with anyone bigger than, say, the shoe department manager at Meijer. I saw a picture of myself in the paper once, and couldn’t look in the mirror for a week without blushing.

I have to qualify here – it’s only famous people in the arts and entertainment arena that undo me. Big business people, sports people, I can take ‘em or leave ‘em. I could pick up Mark McGwire or Bill Gates hitch-hiking, and say nothing more than, “I think there’s a phone at the Mobil Station.” Paul McCartney, however, would be different:

Paul: Thanks for the lift.

Me: Ooh-I’ve-been-a-fan-since-I-was-little-I-saw-you-on-Ed-Sullivan-when-I-was-seven-what-was-John-Lennon-really-like-can-you-show-me-how-to-play-Blackbird?-oh-I-forgot-you’re-left-handed…..

Paul: Why don’t you just drop me off at the Mobil station.

This side of me was marching in full parade dress the night I met Suzy Anchorperson, and, I think, for good reason. When someone comes into your home night after night for all of your adult life and tells you Important News Stuff and stares you (and 750,000 other people) in the eye and smiles at you while you lay in bed eating Totino’s pizza and waiting for M*A*S*H to come on after the news– well, you develop a bond with that person. Admittedly it’s a one-way bond, but who else other than your spouse comes as close to tucking you in every night?

This time, however, there were no cameramen in between, and she wasn’t a cloud of electrons being scanned onto a screen. I couldn’t switch to a rerun of Starsky and Hutch while I changed into my bedclothes. She wouldn’t be momentarily cutting to a commercial, or saying, “Back to you, Biff”. It was me and her, her and me, eyeball to eyeball.

It was the annual Bethany Christian Services fundraising gala banquet, and dinner would have cost me two weeks salary had I not been part of the evening’s entertainment. Earlier, I had been hanging out with the drummer, near the hors d’ouvres. (You could be lost in the Badlands in August, but if you had a drummer with you, he could find the buffet line)

Me: Hey – there’s Suzy Anchorperson! RIGHT THERE! Right over by the punch bowl!

Drummer: These little corned beef things are really good.

Me: I’m going to go over and see how near I can get to her.

Drummer: (to a passing waitress) Excuse me – could I get, like, a whole bag of these things to take with me?

Me: I’m going to see if I can get close enough to brush up against her shoulder or something.

Drummer: Man, isn’t there like, a law against that in this state?

He pretended like he didn’t know me as I made my way through the crowd and nonchalantly lunged for a glass of punch, being sure to brush Suzy’s shoulder ever so slightly as I reached for the glass. It was as close as I dared to get.

Off and on during the evening I saw Suzy from my vantage point on the stage, and wondered if she was impressed with my playing. What I really wanted her to know was that I’d written the arrangements for the band. But that wouldn’t happen because talking to her was right out. Why a grown man needs the approval of someone he’s never met, I don’t know. But I’m like that, you know?

Some of us ended up hanging out kind of late afterward, talking with non-famous people. We had some props to bring out to the car – among other things, a stuffed bear and an old rocking chair. And so it was that I was holding a stuffed bear and dragging an old chair through the Amway Grand hotel lobby as we converged with another couple at the doorway. And true to God’s sense of humor as it personally applies to me, it was Suzy Anchorperson and her husband, looking tired and ready to go home. There was no avoiding them.

I dug down deep for something clever to say, some way of making a good first impression, some way of letting her know I was a peer—a media professional like herself. I wasn’t, really, but…I did play the piano pretty god.

I thought of 60 or 70 things to say in the 1.5 seconds it took to stop at the door, and discarded them just as rapidly. She would have seen us both on the stage, and would recognize us but not know our names, and I knew who she was, of course, but would proper introductions be in order anyway? I was quickly unraveling.

The woman I was walking out of the building with, one of the singers, did what any rational person would do, something I never would have thought of – she said, “Hi.” I stood, eyeball to eyeball with Suzy Anchorperson, shaking her hand and trying to think of Something Important to say. Because, you don’t say just anything in a situation like that. You meet your wife’s Uncle Jerry, you make small talk. You meet a TV personality, someone who’s spent more time in your living room than your mother-in-law, somebody who’s met lots of famous people, you don’t throw away words – you say Something Important.

Friend: “Hi, so nice to meet you. I’m Linda”

Suzy: “I’m Suzy Anchorperson, and this is my husband, Mr. Suzy Anchorperson.”

Me: I know one of your tech guys, Bob. Say hi to him for me.

It was a stupid, overly familiar, socially awkward thing to say, but…that’s what came out. Before I could take it back, she said—with a smile reserved for stupid, overly familiar, socially awkward people—that I should contact him myself.

I kicked myself all the way out to the car, while the person I was with tried unsuccessfully to control her giggling.

And so I met and conversed with Suzy Anchorperson. I feel, in retrospect, that I did manage to convey Something Important to her: if a man holding a stuffed animal and dragging an old chair greets you in a downtown hotel, make an excuse about a Mobil station, and get out while you can.