Our Hero Meets her Hero

So, on Tuesday night I went to the Laurie Notaro reading at the Astor Place Barnes & Noble. I had never heard Laurie read before, but I do own all four of her books. The first miracle, was that I was joined by my dear friends Ms. Miller and Ms. Neuffer. That in and of itself is cause for celebration, since I can never get more than one friend in one place at any given time. Seriously. Sometimes I think I just have one friend and she is pulling the old Clark Kent/Superman thing on me. I'm not that bright; this could go on for a long time before I caught on. So there I was with two friends, sitting in the middle of the Human Sexuality section of the bookstore which featured some very distracting cover art.

Laurie Notaro looked exactly how I imagined her, exactly like how you would want her to look. Frizzy red hair, funky glasses, big ass. And she was manic. She was just so high energy. We just sat there as this crazy red-headed woman was yelling at us into the microphone, giving the Barnes & Noble Store Manager, who was an uptight control freak as evidenced by the way she tried to inforce order on book signing time, a small stroke with the language she was using. Oh, and she also sang some Supertramp songs, kareoke style. It was perhaps a little like seeing a vision of my future. Maybe someday I'll be the crazy red-headed woman yelling into a microphone to a crowd of 40 inside a Barnes and Noble on a Tuesday night!

After the reading, we had to form an orderly line, row by row, to get our books signed. Laurie Notaro, brillian Idiot-Girl that she is, bought a large bag of chocolate Twizzlers to pass out. When Neuffer and I went up to meet her, we had a little conversation. I told Laurie I was wearing bike shorts under my skirt to help with the Chub Rub; I then thanked her for putting a name to this phenomenon that I had hiterto never seen mentioned in print (If you don't know what Chub Rub is, you'll have to go look it up). I also informed some people standing around that for a limited time, Twix is making a Special Edition Dark Chocolate Twix, which is good, but nowhere near as mind-blowing as when Reese's made the inside out Peanut Butter Cup (chocolate on the inside, peanut butter on the outside). This is pretty much all I remember.

So when we walked away from the table, Neuff and I looked into our books to see what Laurie had written. In mine, she wrote something like, "Bike Shorts rule. I love you! Thanks for understanding. Laurie Notaro". Now, I got a little hung up on the "I love you" part; it was just so weird. How often does someone tell you "I love you"? How often do you see it written down? If you're me, not often. I mean, I talk to my Dad usually once a week on the phone and I try to remember to tell him I love him, but that's about it. And here was some stranger, really, writing it to me inside a paperback book in a Sharpie no less! And we're not talking fine point, either. I got a big, fat "I love you". Oh, I thought. Laurie Notaro loves me. That's cool.

Okay, so there's no end to this story, but don't you think that's an odd thing for an author to write in your book?