Extra! Extra! Julie Meets Paul Feig! Part Two!

See previous post for the beginning of this story.
When Paul finished speaking, I wanted to be the first one up there for autographs (mostly because I should have been, since I was sitting there for over an hour before everyone else, but also because the sooner we went, the sooner we could start the long drive home). The Borders crew seemed a little clueless, and they were like, “OK, we’ll go row by row,” and I swear they were going to start from the back row. As if! So Matt and I were up first. I was very sincere (as I usually am. One of my best and worst traits, I think), and told Paul how far we drove to see him, and how we loved the show, and, basically, everything I wrote in the previous blog post. He was genuinely touched that we came that far for him. It was awesome! It’s just how I would have wanted it to go! And almost right away, Matt pulls out a copy of Get Well Soon, which I brought to maybe give Paul. The thinking was that if I give it to him, then maybe he’ll want to get in touch with me again someday. I don’t know. I had some other thinking, too, but it feels cheesy and embarrassing to mention. In any case, he took the book and told me to sign it! So cool! So I wrote, “To Paul, My Hero!”, and then he signed our two books in the nicest way. One he signed to my students, and wrote, “Keep up the great work! You have an amazing librarian!!!” an in our book he wrote, “Matt and Julie, You guys are the best. I can’t thank you enough for being so cool and driving so far to see me. It really really means a lot!” See. Genuinely touched, right? I wish there were a million hours to chat about funny things and what Salem the cat was like (when he worked on “Sabrina, the Teenage Witch”) and how tall Stephen Merchant really is. Ah well. At least I got to meet him, and it was a fantastic experience. Now I made the mistake of making him a Facebook friend (for which I am usually very picky. Ex-students often try to friend me, and I usually say no because I don’t think I want to see what they’re up to. I try to use MySpace for the masses, and just use Facebook for the close ones. So if some day you try to friend me and nothing happens, please don’t take offense. I like to keep it neat. I’m weird that way. I’ll shut up now). That shouldn’t be a mistake, but there will always be a part of me that when I log on and see the little number next to my inbox messages, I’ll hope it’s from him. Why must the internet make everyone so accessible? It’s nothing like the days of sending fan letters and just assuming that you’ll never hear back (but checking the mailbox every day just in case. Wait. I guess it is kind of like those days, then). I will stop writing about this to the point of over-analysis. Stay tuned for some pictures from the momentous event!