All Rileyed Up

Over the weekend, I attended Meet the Authors, a luncheon put on by the local friends of the library group. When I showed up, the woman in charge of seating looked at me and Sis-In-Law and said, “Are you the students?”

“No. We’re just looking for the unreserved seating.”

She led the way and Sis-In-Law and I giggled over being mistaken for “students.” Two of the speakers were college professors and I figured they had a couple of their students in attendance. Ah, I must look pretty young, right?

When the luncheon started, the introduction speaker got up, made a push for everyone to join the friends of the library organization (and if you’re already a member, consider upgrading your membership!) and then announced two special guests. He asked two kids to stand up. They were two local high school students who wrote essays on why they would like to attend the luncheon and on the merit of said essays, were given free tickets.

You know what this means, right?

It means that the woman thought I was a high school student.

HIGH SCHOOL.

Like, ohmigod, like, wow.

As an additional, side note: yesterday, when I was buying a bottle of champagne, the woman asked for my ID and then said very loudly, “1977! You look like you could be in high school!”

I’ve come to the conclusion that think these people must not spend time around actual high school students.

That being said, I will ride these comments out for all they’re worth. I look eighteen… I look eighteen… I am youthful… yes, indeed…

Ahem. Back to the luncheon.

Minus the unimpressive dessert (I don’t know what it was supposed to be, but it was a disc of jellied lemon-colored food entity laid atop flavorless cool whip-type substance), the luncheon went well.

The award for most interesting quote goes to Amy Wilentz. I was immediately drawn to Wilentz when I saw she wrote The Rainy Season: Haiti Since Duvalier. If you have never heard of Papa Doc or Baby Doc Duvalier or the Tonton Macoutes, consider yourself lucky. I bought the book and she was available to sign it before the luncheon, so I struck up a brief conversation with her about writing fiction vs. nonfiction (she does both) and how she got interested in Haitian history. She was, in short, cool. During her speech, she talked about her interview with Benazir Bhutto, one of the final interviews with Bhutto before her assassination (read it here). And again, I thought, wow, she has lived some life. But nothing made me think that more than this: her grandfather was the lead prosecutor in the Lindbergh baby trial. “My grandfather sent someone to the electric chair,” she said, and followed it up with (paraphrased) “it’s a strange thing to grow up with.” This remark left me speechless. A number of people in the audience laughed, and I don’t know, but somehow the thought didn’t really hit my funny bone.

Another speaker was Gina Nahai, an Iranian Jew who wrote Cry of the Peacock, the first Western language book in 3,000 years to discuss Iranian Jews. She talked of how her fiction stories are all real, based on her own family’s lives, and what a wild family she has, based on the descriptions of the books (I bought two of them). Among other things, she said her family revolves around tradition and curses—children pay for the crimes of their ancestors generations later. This reminded me of Wilentz’ electric chair remark, and I wondered what she was thinking when Nahai said that.

The other speaker was a mystery writer, T. Jefferson Parker. He was, by far, the least serious speaker, candid and approachable and in good humor. He talked about how he read Catch 22 in high school and it was a wonderful thing, and if his writing could give 1/100th the amount of pleasure to someone else that Catch 22 gave him, then he would consider himself a success. I like to say things like that too.

Before I did any writing outside of my journal, I often said that I just wanted to write something that made other people smile, even if only for a moment. I get that from this blog (unless you are among the people who do not like this blog, in which case, why have you read this far?).

Then I said, if I could just publish some thing, one thing, in a print publication, then I would be happy. Then I published a short story.

Then I said, if I could just write a novel—no worrying about publishing it or anything else—just to actually write a novel from beginning to end, then I would be satisfied. And then I finished my novel.

Now, I’m saying, if I could just find an agent and publish my book, then I would be happy…

Does this mean that I am good at setting a goal and achieving it and then setting a new goal based on the prior achievement, or does this mean that I can never be pleased?

Oh well. At least I still have my youth.