A funny story (to me, anyway)

As a note before I let you read this story, I wrote this a number of years ago, so I won't change anything except for taking out some names. Grammar mistakes that old will just have to remain.

When I was a freshman in college, I didn’t start working until near the end of my first semester. I was scared to look for a job in the middle of a semester, but luckily a girl I visit taught was a member of an event staff and told me they might be hiring. I turned my resume in and within a week, I got a call for an interview.

Never having gone through a formal interview for a job before, I was really nervous that I wouldn’t impress my potential new boss. The supervisor for the event staff turned out to be one of the least intimidating people I have ever met.

Despite my freshman anxiety, I was chatting comfortably with her by the end of the interview. After informing me that our main jobs were crowd control and checking standards, she asked me all sorts of easy questions like, “What would you do if a girl who wore a shirt that showed her stomach wanted to go into a dance?” Being a polite but blunt person this job seemed perfect for me.

I forgot one small detail. I’m a terribly shy person around people I don’t know very well. As a new college student, I was intimidated by just about everyone. I assumed everyone I met was older—and therefore wiser—than me. This was not good for having to tell people to follow the rules. The first few events I worked, I cried when I got home because people had yelled at me. I was afraid to tell anybody anything for fear of being yelled at again. However, I am very good at pretending, so I pretended that I didn’t care what they said to me and that I felt comfortable “yelling” at people. When I wasn’t timid, people would listen to me. I fooled a lot of people into thinking I was a very confident person.

The first dance I worked started out very boring. We expected it to be small, so there were only two of us working—me and a senior who’d been working on the event staff for several years. She gave me the basic run down of what we were doing. Happily, we didn’t have to take tickets and, as it was winter, checking standards wasn’t really a problem. Our two biggest responsibilities were making sure people weren’t too wild and making sure they kept their shoes on.

At first, we didn’t think that either responsibility would be a problem because no one showed up! We thought that maybe were in the wrong place until the DJ showed up—late. That gave us small comfort; however, for the next hour, it was us and the DJ. Finally, two people showed up. They danced their hearts out for a half an hour before anyone else showed up. I thought, “Wow. Dances aren’t so bad. This will be cake.”

Two hours after the dance “began,” people began to show up in groups of 8 to 12 people. Soon, the dance was in full swing and our work finally began. The dancing never got very wild, so we didn’t have to tell anyone to cool it—which I found out later, is very hard!

Shoes became the biggest challenge. I’ve found that most people have an innate desire to dance in the bare feet (or socks for some people). I had to tell many, many people to put their shoes back on. They invariably would fight my polite request at first, but quickly would comply, thus making my life easier. It even became kind of fun. It was a very small power trip, I guess.

One of the last people I talked to about shoes was quite a character. Our dialogue was very interesting. I started out with my usual polite request. “Excuse me, will you please put your shoes back on.”

“Why?” he asked immediately.

“The rules of the dance require that you leave your shoes on,” I said, as I had said many times before that night.

His response was new. “But I can dance better without shoes!” And he began to pirouette.

“That’s nice,” I said when he finished. “But you still have to wear your shoes.”

He protested vigorously. Finally he pleaded, “How about we pretend you didn’t see it?”

I thought for a moment. “Fine,” I said. His face lit up with joy at having gotten away with something.

I turned away from him, then turned back to face him. “Oh, my goodness,” I said calmly. “You don’t have your shoes on.” He didn’t laugh at my joke, but he did put his shoes back on. I walked away, hoping that I wouldn’t have to talk to him again.

That ended up being my most eventful conversation of the night, which I was grateful for. I told my co-worker about it as we walked home and she laughed. “One for the journal,” I thought.

The next day, I went to pick up my soon-to-be sister-in-law from work. It wasn’t quite time for her to leave, but no one else was in the store, so we talked while she restocked shelves. Not long before it was time to go, the bells rung at the front of the store and she walked to the front so whoever it was would know that someone was in the store.

I stayed near the back of the store, waiting for the people to leave. As I carefully pondered what was on the shelf in front of me, they walked into the aisle where I was standing. I looked up, and to my surprise, it was the boy who I had spoken to the night before!

“Look! It’s the lightstick lady!” he exclaimed to his companion—a very cute freshman girl. [to explain the light-stick, event staff had to carry them at dances so we could find one another easily]

“Hello, shoe-boy,” I responded, trying to remain unflustered. I heard him beginning to tell the story of the previous night to his friend. I was relieved when they left the store.

“Who was that?!” asked my sister-in-law. “And how do you know him? Is he a ‘friend’ of yours?” (As a happily engaged couple, she and my brother were always trying to bring romance into my life.)

I sighed and then explained how we had met the night before. She laughed and life moved on. . . or so I thought. . .

‘Shoe-boy’ (as I had branded him) remarkably showed up to every dance I worked at or attended our freshman year. Every time I saw him, I saw recognition dawn in his eyes, and occasionally he would pirouette in acknowledgement. We had a couple other "encounters," but those are stories for another day...