Blog(h)er Smackdown – Take 2

 

What’s that old saying? People who live in glass houses really shouldn’t look in the mirror?!? … well, something like that …

No matter how realistically you think you view yourself, there are certain aspects of our individual nature or personality that we all like to ignore or hide away from the general public.

Trouble is, sometimes life forces you to look in the mirror and find an ugly truth. *sigh*

Sometimes the knowledge comes courtesy of a friend. Sometimes it comes courtesy of a life event.

And sometimes, just sometimes, it comes compliments of a 6-foot tall red furry monster that is supposed to be teaching babies and toddlers, not 30-something year olds, about the world.

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A couple of Friday morning’s ago I was preparing to engage with over 2,000 bloggers at the opening day of the BlogHer conference coming off of a cancelled-airplane-rerouted-flight-seven-hours-later-only-5-hours-sleep-in-two-days exodus from Florida to New York.

Now some women won’t leave the house (or hotel) without applying their face. Some people wouldn’t dream of going out in public in wrinkled suitcase clothes. Some bloggers would never attend a conference session without a notebook and pen.

Me?

I know myself well enough not to even consider engaging with a single soul until I’ve had my morning cup of coffee.

And so with the laser-focus of a guided missile, I set my sights on the conference corridor table filled with coffee, and barreled towards my target – blissfully unaware I was about to learn a fundamental difference between myself and my twitter BFF @Aspiringmama

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Halfway from the escalators to the coffee table, the crowd began to thicken. A few women tried to catch my eye, smile, engage. One even began to take a step in my direction as I approached. I put my head down, eyes on the floor, and quickened my pace.

When I needed to adjust the computer bag beginning to slip off my shoulder a few steps later, I chanced a half-glance up.

There! Only 20 feet away! Coffee…. About the only thing on earth (beside a really, really big spider) that can get me to squeeeee. Just. in.front.of.me.

I began to count my steps. The room disintegrated into a blur. Only one thing remained clear – my target, my lifeline, my morning cup of coffee!

I was almost there!….until some idiot blogger bumped into me and set me slightly off course. Without even looking, I did what any reasonable person would – I elbowed this cruel individual in the back, followed with a shove from my palm and prepared to get back on course.

“Sorry!” a voice shouted from behind me.

Something in the squeaky tenor of the apology made me turn around. I stopped dead in my tracks.

It was unthinkable.

I had just assaulted ELMO.

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I drank that cup of coffee down to the last drop. Like seriously, I shook the cup upside down to get those last little dribbles to travel into my mouth, all the while convinced that every eye in the room was really trained on me and my growing sense of shame and not the wonderful panelists discussing autism myths.

If I was the kind of person who would assault an innocent furry monster, then, by God, I was the kind of person who would at least make it worth it!

And that’s when my phone buzzed. A text from @Aspiringmama: “I just got a picture with Elmo!”

As it turns out, Pauline had seen Elmo just seconds after my attack, and had zig-zagged through the crowd, belly-crawled under the coffee tables and raced into the expo hall to chase the 6-foot tall furball so she could get a picture for her 3-year old daughter Buttercup.

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When the APB went out for information leading to the capture of the blogger deranged enough to assault poor Elmo, I reached out to a few close bloggy-friends to shield my identity and get cups of coffee for me.

Me? I spent the rest of the weekend drinking my coffees in bathrooms, corners and behind the taxi stand in front of the Hilton, contemplating the depths of depravity associated with my coffee obsession.

The really sad part? Ultimately, given a second chance? I’d still go for the coffee …..