I have. One time, I saw Ronald Reagan come out of a hotel and get into a limousine. When I told my third grade teacher about it the next day, a glob of spit flew out of her mouth and hit me in the forehead.
"You did!?" she exclaimed.
Seeing the President was cool. (Getting spit on wasn't.) It was exciting, people were running around, he got into one car and a stream of other cars whisked him out into the D.C. traffic.
When I was in college, I worked in a convenience store off campus. One day when I was working, Ted Koppel came in with his son.
"May I have... a pack of Carltons, please." he said, in his deep and dusty voice.
Sounded just like he did on TV. His son, was just some kid. I probably had seen him before. Couldn't identify him from any other schmo on the planet. But you know what? Ted Koppel was just some schmo too. Just a guy who had to get the hell out of the house and get some smokes. A guy with imperfections and insecurities and faults. He was short too.
Around that time, I was starting to realize the impact TV had on the way I thought. I loved TV, still do. I watch way too much. I find myself getting wrapped up in a series and watching it from beginning to end, thanks to DVRs and Netflix. Recently, my son and I watched the entire six seasons of Psych. My poor wife. We didn't watch it all at once, but every time we turned the TV on, we would watch at least one episode. (... and yes, shut up I realize that I am dragging my children down the same rabbit hole. The difference is, I've already been there. I've got a map! We spend a lot of time living in reality world too.)
I realized after I waited on Ted, that we are all just people, trying to figure out what the hell this world is all about. We are all just trying to get paid, get laid, make a difference... not die.
We all deal with it in different ways. Some of us face things head on, some of use run the other way, some of us turn to religion, some of us break down. No matter what happens, nothing gets wrapped up in a 20 to 44 minutes. (because of commercials) Happy endings are relative and even the Brady Bunch was two broken households that ended up living in the same modern style house.
Life is what you make it. Crappy things happen. People do shitty things to each other. Each day we get up and try to do things better than we did the day before. It is amazing how much you can screw up and still lead a happy productive life!
In today's 24 hour news cycle, we watch celebrities succeed and fail. They make ridiculous life choices, we judge and demean them. (Tom Cruise, scientology... WTF?) The funny thing is, most people are doing the same idiotic stuff, they just don't get filmed every time they leave their house.
I think that would make some awesome TV. Just pick one random person and treat them like a celebrity for 24 hours. Follow them from place to place. Poke cameras into their windows and surround them when they leave McDonald's. Would that guy make decisions that are any different than a kid who ended up in the spotlight because of some gig they got with Disney?
One time, I was at an event in Baltimore. Daisy Fuentes walked with her entourage in front of the crowd. I saw her coming and pulled out my camera. I was busy trying to point the camera and shoot a photo along with a hundred other idiotic people like myself. She walked by, I didn't get the photo and I have no idea what she looked like. I was so busy trying to "capture the moment" that I forgot to just live the moment.
Big events make big news. Big celebrities make us jealous and make us question what we are doing wrong. In the end, we all have the same problems and one life to do the best that we can. Being a celebrity is sometimes a good thing, sometimes a bad thing; just like most things.
I try to remind myself everyday to just do one more thing right today, than I did yesterday. Sometimes, I get that one thing, sometimes I screw three more things up. I think that if we all tried to just do one more thing right and remember that we are all struggling with the same issues, we all might appreciate what we have a lot more and wish we were someone else, a lot less.
"May I have... a pack of Carltons, please?" I can still hear it in my mind like it was yesterday. As if, it were a TV rerun.
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