Stalking Finn

I haven't had too much experience with famous people. For the longest time my best story was that as a deli girl at Eagle Market, I made Josh Brolin and Diane Lane their sandwiches twice. This was well before Josh's resurgence as a real movie star with No Country for Old Men, and an Oscar nomination for Milk... I knew him from Goonies and Thrashin'. (What is Thrashin', you ask? Well, my friends, here's the synopsis given on IMDb.com: "Two skateboarding gangs battle each other for supremacy, and a member of one gang falls in love with the sister of his rival." I think that's all you need to know. Oh, also, it was made in 1986. Yup. I own it if you want to borrow it.)

I didn't know who Diane Lane was. When the pair chose Eagle Market for their sub sandwich needs and stopped in, I thought she was a child (she's extremely short and wasn't wearing any makeup) and Josh looked like a confirmed Lake Rat. Tattered boardshorts, a foul wifebeater, and greasy long hair made for a "celebrity" that I just wasn't too impressed with at the time. (If only I'd kept his sandwich order form... I'd have his autograph!)

This all changed the night my friends Jasmine and Erin took me out for my birthday a few weeks ago. We spent a pleasant afternoon in Cambria and planned on finishing the evening at Erin's apartment in San Luis with a low key dessert and TV watching spree. In the car on the way to the coast, I suddenly remembered something.

Me: "Oh! Lynnea told me that a band is playing at SLO Brew tonight named Bonnie Dune... one of the guitar players is a guy we knew in high school, and their drummer is FINN."

Jasmine: (confused look) "Like, he looks like Finn?"

Me: "NO. HE IS FINN. Cory Monteith is THEIR DRUMMER."

Jasmine: OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD WE HAVE TO GO!!!

Erin: (thought bubble) My friends are certifiably retarded. And who is Finn?

If you don't watch Glee, you won't know who Finn is. Glee has become one of my favorite shows over the last couple years... as over-the-top ridiculous and at times inappropriate and unrealistic as it can be, I think the underlying message is sweet. And I'm a sucker for musical theater. Finn is the male lead in the show's high school Glee club. His character is dense, but cute, and he is a talented drummer. And he was GOING TO BE PLAYING AT SLO BREW IN MERE HOURS.

After deciding to head straight to Downtown SLO to see if we could finagle some tickets to this no doubt epic show, we drove past SLO Brew to find a line almost around the block, full of high school girls, waiting to get in two hours early. At that moment, we changed our plans and proceeded to Erin's abode, where we figured we would partake in our originally scheduled, tranquil girls' night in.

It only took about fifteen minutes in Erin's apartment after tossing down our purses and lounging on the couch/chair/floor before Jasmine said, "So... maybe we should go get dessert downtown and walk around. Maybe he'll be down there."

I immediately concurred and felt my pulse rise at the thought that we could just run into a famous person downtown. Not just any famous person, but the male lead in one of my favorite shows. Luckily Erin is up for anything, and despite not being a regular Glee viewer, and not knowing who in Zeus' name Finn was, she thought dessert sounded like an excellent idea.

Frozen yogurt is always my dessert of choice, and since it was my birthday celebration, I got to choose. This turned out to be a providential selection.

We had just arrived at the foot of the brick staircase leading up to Sephora, Yogurt Creations our end goal, when Jasmine and I both looked across the street at the exact same time. Three boys, all dressed in slim jeans, hoodies, and hiding their faces behind dark sunglasses were strutting abreast down the sidewalk in the opposite direction. They were the only people on that side of Higuera, we were the only people on our side. They must have noticed us gawking.

One of them stood out because he was a head and shoulders taller than the other two.

"That looks like him!" Jasmine hissed through clenched teeth.
"It DOES look like him!" I hissed back.
"Should we follow him?"
"Let's follow him!!!"

At this point we knew we were stalking Cory Monteith, but that's all we knew. To where would we end up following him? Would we say something if he turned around and noticed us? What if he filed a restraining order against me? On my birthday?

None of these questions were important enough to abort the mission. We crossed the street as quickly as we could and kept about a block between the band posse and us. At one intersection, the big red hand started counting down obnoxiously at us. I was a few steps ahead of the other girls (my enthusiasm getting the best of me), and there was no way we'd all make it across in time. "Go!" they yelled at me, "We'll catch up!" (Thank goodness it was my birthday or my friends may not have put up with my ridiculous teeny bopper antics.) I ran ahead, and soon enough Garden Street was upon me. SLO Brew was around the corner, along with the doubled-in-length line of amped up sixteen year old girls. How ironic, I thought to myself, he just walked by all the girls who would trade their iPhones to see him up close, in person, and they don't even know! *evil mind chuckle*

Then: "Heather!!" From the middle of the line, two girls were calling my name. I stopped in my tracks, and squinting into the crowd, I noticed two of the Junior girls I counsel at church waving me over. I sprinted up to them, and panted, "No time!... I'm... stalking... FINN!!" They looked at me with "Whatever" looks on their faces and said, "Oh yeah, look at this," simultaneously shoving their phones and cameras into my face. They had already found Finn and taken pictures with him in line at Firestone! That's where he had been coming from when we spotted him across the street! "Well, FINE, I've gotta go!" I screamed at them, with just a tinge of jealousy.

I took a few lunges down the street, and spun on my heel as I approached Bubblegum Alley, frantically trying to pick up the scent once again. There, standing in the most disgusting tourist attraction known to man, was Cory Monteith with a group of four girls who had obviously been stalking him just as silently and jungle cat-like as I had been. Jasmine and Erin had caught up with me by now, and Jasmine was pushing me into the gum-encrusted alley, "Go ask him for a picture!" I tossed her my camera like a hot potato and as the other girls walked away giggling and twittering (so immature), I walked up to him and asked quietly, suddenly feeling like a 13 year old girl with a crush on the most popular boy in school, "Can I take my picture with you?" He gave me a lopsided Finn grin and said, "Yeah!" and proceeded to put his arm around me for the photo op. Jasmine made a funny quip as she took the picture about what a nasty place we were standing in, and even had the presence of mind to ask if he'd been to San Luis before. I stood there smiling silently like a developmentally delayed moron until it was time to say dumbly, "Thank you," and watch him walk away.

I was on a high for hours following my first experience as a true-to-life creeper, unable to process the fact that I had not only seen Finn, but followed, cornered, taken a photo with, and touched the love handles belonging to Finn. I had been closer than I'd ever been to famous person... a famous person I cared about! One I watched sing, dance badly, and misunderstand big words EVERY WEEK!

The night ended with Jasmine and me attending the Bonnie Dune concert (along with all the boppers we'd seen earlier, but added to the mix were 45-year-old moms with telephoto lenses... Finn would much rather a girl like me stalk him, right? Right?), which turned out to be a fabulous show.

Needless to say, I have a much more exciting "famous person" story now, but as my brother-in-law Dave pointed out, people like me are "why he was wearing a hoodie".

Roommate Woes & Broken Toes

College is a time in life brimming with extremes. During my freshman year, I alternated between tomfoolery with brand new friends and sitting miserably in the corner of my cell block dorm room in a state of depression, desperately missing my family and friends at home.

One of the most amusing things about college is finding out who you will be bunking with all year. I attended Westmont College in Santa Barbara, and bless the housing staff, they sent out contact information toward the end of the summer preceding my Freshman year. I was able to talk to both of my roommates on the phone about a month before actually meeting them. No, a ten minute phone call does not give you a true idea of who a person is, but it made us feel much more at ease when we did meet face to face on Move-In Day.

Sharing a room is a challenge. Especially when you've had your own room your whole life, and are suddenly expected to share a room no bigger than your bedroom at home, bulging with twice as much furniture, with two other people. People you've never met.

Sara, me, & Misty: our first day together... Page B 316

Misty was the first roomie I encountered. She was settling into our room in Page B when my family and I showed up. A musical theater student who dreamed of living in New York City one day, Misty and I didn't seem to have a whole lot in common at first. We still joke that if we'd attended the same high school, we may have never even met, let alone become friends. Misty was outgoing, organized, confident, talented, and seemed very excited to begin our first year.

Sara showed up later. Sara was a sweet Catholic girls' school graduate who was very clearly, even from the first day, attached to her family. She was apprehensive at first, and seemed much more hesitant about starting school away from home. She was a health nut who ran at least four miles every day, like clockwork, and never put any kind of sweet treat in her mouth. She called her mom once a day, finished her homework weeks in advance, and started listening to Christmas music in October.

We discovered immediately that we each had very different schedules. Sara went to bed at nine and woke up at dawn whether she had class or not. I was the middle ground, finishing my homework somewhat late and turning in around eleven each night. Misty was our room's night owl, partly because of her internal rhythm and partly because she had night rehearsals for the plays in which she always earned starring roles, and couldn't start her homework until midnight some nights.

Me, Sara, Misty, & our next door neighbor
and dear friend, April... Winter Formal 2000

Another reality we quickly became aware of was the difference in our individual perceptions of "clean" and "chores". Misty and I had a respectable handle on keeping things tidy, and it drove us batty when our tiny room became even tinier with the haphazard placement of Sara's piles of dirty clothes and free weights. We learned that Sara had never done her own laundry at home when she asked us how to use the machines downstairs, and had to be told to separate her whites and colors. After a month or two of living together, Misty and I realized that we were the only ones taking out the trash and borrowing the third floor's shared vacuum (it took an average of 45 seconds to vacuum our room, since only about three and a half square feet of carpet showed). We passively aggressively experimented with "waiting to see how full the trash can could become" and "how many hairballs will get stuck between her toes" before Sara noticed and took it upon herself to contribute to our room's hygiene. This never worked because she never noticed. Misty or I, without fail, would either become so frustrated at throwing a piece of paper onto the top of our trash mountain, only to have it roll right back to us, or become nauseated by the smell of Sara's daily banana peels rotting in the can. One of us would eventually give in and huffily yank the bag out, tie it up as loudly as possible, and stomp out, hoping she'd perceive the hints. She didn't.

Misty finally had a brilliant idea: she fashioned a chore chart and taped it to the wall by the door. Yes, the same kind of chore chart you'd find on the refrigerator of a family with preschool children. The three of us rotated through the two chores required to keep our room livable, but we found that when it was time to complete our duties, we still had to prod Sara to do her share. (The first time she took out the trash, weeks after school had started, we had to tell her where the dumpster was.) As ridiculous as it seemed for three eighteen-year-olds to need a chore chart, it seemed to help get Sara involved.

 Outside study session SUNBURNS

The differences in opinion over acceptable living conditions came to a head one day in the spring. Things had gotten tense in the room. The weather had changed, tricking our brains into thinking it was summer, classes had gotten more demanding as teachers assigned even more homework, and the novelty of roomies-turned-built-in-besties had long since faded. The walls of our small living space were closing in on us, and the once seldom occasion that all three of us needed to be in the room at the same time grew increasingly more common, putting us all on edge. We were working furiously on homework one afternoon, when I heard Misty push her chair back behind me, and pad across the room to her closet. On the way back to her desk, I heard a dull THUD followed immediately by Misty's high pitched screeching. "SARA!!! WHAT ARE YOUR WEIGHTS DOING IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ROOM?!?!" She hobbled over to her chair and sank into it, her face red and her eyes glistening with tears of pain. (We were told later by our friend next door, April, that she was also studying and could hear everything.) Misty grabbed her foot and pulled it into her lap, inspecting the toes she had bashed into Sara's misplaced exercise equipment. Misty ultimately had to go to the health center and was told she'd broken her pinkie toe. Sara's constant state of disarray had finally resulted in a casualty: one of Misty's precious phalanges! 

Even after an entire school year, Sara still needed to be schooled in certain aspects of household cleanliness... and simple biology. Another day in spring, when the three of us were once again sharing our minuscule workspace to study, I was violently shaken from an enlightening chapter of my American History book to hear, "Sara! Why did you just throw your contact on the floor?!" (It was obvious by Misty's tone that she was absolutely disgusted.) I turned to see Sara sheepishly looking at Misty, her contact lens case and bottle of solution sitting accusingly on her desk. I could just barely make out the reflection of the overhead light in the tiny half moon on the floor, which had apparently been dropped on purpose. Sara looked back and forth at both of us, confused and defensively, before replying in all seriousness:

"It's okay! They're biodegradable!!"
 
I'm not sure how we survived that year together, but we did, and were able to remain friends. I'm assuming by now, ten years later, all of our living conditions and housecleaning skills have improved. I haven't visited Sara's house in Colorado, though... there is a possibility that she has a room with a pile of crusty, used contact lenses on the floor, waiting to biodegrade...