Few reasons are compelling enough to lure me into a crowd. Fewer reasons are compelling enough to lure me away from my 3 year old. Then I consider the premature eruption of Carmaggedon 2011 in certain parts of Los Angeles and now the only event compelling enough to make me want to get into a sea of potential car rage is a Quora meetup.
I walked into Salute Wine Bar and people were in conversational enclaves. I tried to match these faces with Quora profile pictures and my mind drew blanks.
I said, “Hello I’m Jane Chin and you are…?” and the tallest person in the room said “Charlie Cheever“.
I shook his hand and moved on because I recognized Nick Huber and I saw Nan Waldman sitting on the stool at the bar and I activated my “small talk” button, boy, did I feel grateful!
Someone joined us and I said, “Hello I’m Jane Chin and you are…?” and the person said “Charlie Cheever”.
I’d forgotten the first face I’d met minutes ago, boy, did I feel foolish! Charlie was a good sport and an admitted “Belieber”, although I think Justin is too short to play Charlie in a future social network movie.
Where is that swankily dressed waitress going with that plate of Marguerite pizza? She flitted through clusters of Quorans and put the plate on a long granite tablet.
Must get food. Must penetrate new clusters of conversations, shake new hands and strain my ear to hear their names above the very loud noises of the bar. Must Not Repeat “The Charlie Cheever Incident!”
While I was listening to the childhood tales of Jason Yi I noticed a woman in a nice black dress steal glances over in our direction whom I later learned was Marie Stein.
“Yes! I’m the person who writes about depression! And tiger mothers. And career advice, and er… questions like what should I do with my life,” I said to Mary, who has lovely eyes.
I sat with Daniel Helman and learned the secrets of being a great teacher (sense of humor) and he was nice enough to give me ideas for this August when I’ve decided to spend the entire month with my little boy instead of sending him to a summer camp.
“15 minute increments!… Transitions are important!” said Daniel.
Of course the question I was dreading, and the question I had to answer every time I shook someone’s hand, was “Jane, what do you do?”
“Ah… uh… pffffffft.” I said. No, I really said Pfffft. I also waved my hands in small circles to add some meat to a non-answer, which helped no one understand what I did, including myself.
“Jane, you’re a writer. I’ve read what you’ve written. You’re a writer,” said Nan.
Since Marc Bodnick was Caucasian and traveled without a tea cup*, I did not recognize him using my internal profiling software (that obviously had no RAM, see The Charlie Cheever Incident) and I asked Sandra Liu Huang to introduce me. I gave Marc a copy of my book and he looked at the back cover and fired off a series of questions that I answered with the near expertise of a job interviewee until he said, “What do you do?”
Ah… uh…. pffffffft.
I’m long used to relationships that start from the virtual world (I met my husband on the internet way before meeting spouses on the internet was cool)., but this is the first time I’ve ever been to a “meet-up”.
I’m glad my “first” was with Quora.
*Bodnick’s profile pictures were first of the late Biggie and then of him sitting inside a tea cup ride.