Musings
an Online Journal of Sorts
By Alyce Wilson
Day Three: The Pool of Tears
My third day (Saturday, August 9) at Otakon started hundreds of miles away, in my sister's apartment in State College.
I had driven there the night before, arriving at the ungodly hour of 3:30 a.m.
The cruel Penn State administrators had wasted no opportunity to torture me. The ceremony was scheduled for 10 a.m.
My sister was up and ready in a flash, having set out her outfit the night before. I had, too. The problem was that I was stuck in slow motion. That is, until I made an unfortunate observation.
"Oh, your gowns are blue," I said. "Ours were black."
This started my sister fretting. She'd bought the gown used from someone who'd earned an associate's degree. "Maybe different degrees wear different colors," she said.
I tried to reassure her. "It's been 11 years since I got my bachelor's degree," I said. "The color has probably changed."
But she was so concerned I promised to drive her to the Bryce Jordan Center right then and, if we found she had the wrong color gown, I'd race downtown and buy her the right one.
We hopped in my truck, Red Arrow, and took off. When we got there, we saw only blue gowns and heaved a sigh of relief.
But I had to be sure. "Let's ask someone," I said.
"No!" my sister exclaimed.
"They look nice," I said, pulling up next to a family and leaning out of my rusted pickup truck. "Excuse me. I graduated from Penn State 11 years ago and the gowns were a different color. Can you tell me what degree you're getting?"
"A bachelor's," the gowned one said with a bemused smile.
I turned to my sister, who had shrunk down in her seat. "You've got the right gown," I told her.
"Good. Let me out here," she said.
I stopped in the middle of the parking lot and put my flashers on. "Before you go," I said, "wait a minute." With a lint brush, I got the dog hair off her (my dog Una being my usual passenger).
When I returned to her apartment, Mom and Dad had arrived. I told them I'd successfully performed my duties as auxiliary parent by upsetting and then embarrassing my sister.
"Good job," my mom said and slapped me five.
While we were waiting for the parents of my sister's boyfriend to arrive, I showed Mom my new silver Motorola flip phone.
"It's like something out of Star Trek," she exclaimed. I never had a chance, did I? Geekdom was my birthright. Oh, well. At least I'm a cool geek. After all, I've got a Star Trek phone.
When everyone had arrived, we drove to the Bryce Jordan Center. All the good seats were taken, so we sat in the second balcony.
In the first row was a toddler with two hearing aids who was trying desperately to commit suicide. He squirmed on his parents' laps, thrashing and wriggling, trying to launch himself between the railings. Once they let him touch the Plexiglass (mysteriously providing protection for only certain sections), and he pressed his hand against it and looked down longingly at the precipice below.
When the graduates filed in, they were seated on the floor way below. My sister's boyfriend spotted her first and we kept trying to point her out to Mom.
"She's the one in the fourth row. She just fixed her hair. She's leaning forward, talking to someone. She's still talking to someone. Well, you can't really see her just now."
The ceremony seemed short, considering it lasted two hours. Much of that time was taken up announcing the graduates' names as they marched across the stage. Even though everyone had been warned to "respect the dignity and decorum of the ceremony," as soon as the first family violated the rules to cheer for a grad, everyone had their own cheering sections. Someone even blew an airhorn.
As she was filing out at the end, my sister looked straight at us and waved. She must have followed the sound of our cheers.
Afterwards, we presented gifts to her and then ate at a nearby restaurant. Over dinner, I asked, "So, did anyone really pay attention to the speaker?" I'd meant to, but I'd kept drifting off.
To my surprise, most everyone had and they launched into a discussion of the finer points of his presentation. My sister was the only one who admitted not listening. She'd been too distracted trying to figure out where she was supposed to go when they called her name.
Having finished our meals, we wandered awhile in the woody areas near my sister's apartment, as she pointed out all the fantastically colorful mushrooms she'd found there. It was kind of funny, this crowd of dressy people wandering in the moss, but the mushrooms were worth it.
After everyone else had started their return journeys, I lay down for a nap. My sister bustled around, preparing for a party. She apologized, when I awoke, for running the vacuum. I hadn't heard it.
One soda later and I was hugging my sister and heading back to Baltimore. Yes, I'm quite mad; but that's already been established.
The very nice registration goddess had given me Saturday off, because of my sister's graduation. I'd decided to take the opportunity to enjoy some of the convention.
When I arrived, I put on my new Planet Harlemm T-shirt, rolling up the sleeves (whatever possessed me to get a large?) and tucking it into a houndstooth skirt that used to be a mini but, now that I've lost weight, hangs down to my knees.
I wandered the Baltimore Convention Center, stopping in at places like Operations, LARP and Video Ops to chat with friends. Maybe it was the air conditioning, but I began to fade, my eyes growing blurry...
I returned to my room to lie down but I was too excited to sleep. So I caught the end of the Game Show, which is where contestants answer anime-related questions. It was fun. A staff member who was distributing goodies to the audience threw me both a box of chocolate Pocky and a cute eraser, the latter hitting me in the chest, much to his chagrin.
As the evening wore down, I ended up with some friends (old and new), hanging out in a hotel room. Maybe it was exhaustion, or maybe it was something I ate or drank (never consume anything marked "EAT ME" or "DRINK ME"), but before I realized what had happened, I'd shrunk quite small and was flailing in a pool of tears.
Around me swirled a Knave of Hearts, cruel maidens and the Drama Queen, shrieking in my ear, "The Knave of Hearts, he stole my tarts!"
That's when a Dormouse paddled up with a raft. I gladly climbed aboard. He listened to me, nodded his mousie head wisely and said, "This is not worth worrying about. You'll see. The pool of tears will dry up by tomorrow."
Another creature swam by, this one resembling a bat.
"I am Batman," he announced. He took a corner of the raft.
As we paddled about, I began to realize my crying was only making the pool deeper. "I really ought to stop," I scolded myself, and promptly ignored my advice.
"Isn't this out of order? It's supposed to be at the beginning, isn't it?" the Dormouse asked.
"Well, it doesn't matter," Batman said. "We're all mad, you know."
"And what will I care, as a butterfly, what I did as a caterpillar?" I said. It was simple, really. It was all quite simple.
When the pool subsided, the Dormouse walked me home. By the time I arrived at my hotel room, I was normal sized again. The Drama Queen was nowhere to be seen.
Curiouser and curiouser.
More of Alyce's Adventures in Otakon:
Musings on Otakon 2006:
August 8, 2006 - Bunny Ears of Command
Musings on Otakon 2005:
Musings on Otakon 2004:
August 10 , 2004 - Overture to Otakon
Moral:
It was high time to go, for the pool was getting quite crowded... Alice
led the way, and the whole party swam to the shore.
Copyright
2003 by Alyce Wilson
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