Friday, February 19, 2010

putting two dinosaur-sized feet in my mouth

Sarawr the Dinosaur is really very good at it, is the thing. Example(s):

Tuesday was the Evangelism event. More about this later, but we were set up between the two student buildings and there wasn't a ton of traffic so when anyone would go by, we'd try to talk to them. (tense shift) So then this tiny little woman walks by. Looks like faculty, definitely not a student. But she's looking over, kind of hesitating, and I decide to see if she's interested, if she'll give us a minute or two. She is, she does. And let me tell you, she starts asking all these questions: who are we with? What is this for? Why are doing it? And we run through the proxe station with her while having polite conversation and all that, and so the perfectly natural question comes up:

"What's your name?"

She looks at me--she has sunglasses on so it's harder to gauge her reaction--but she looks at me and says, "I'm the chancellor. I'm Rosemary DePaolo."

Buuuh. The chancellor! At this point everyone is telling me that of course it's the chancellor, didn't I recognize her? And I'm stumbling over my words, near about hiding behind the proxe station and mostly just have my mouth half open while everyone laughs at me and she walks away and four years after coming to this school, whoops. We see that I still don't recognize her.

The thing is, this isn't the first I've had a face-to-face interaction with her. The very beginning of my junior year we had move-in for the new students and it was about 6:30 in the morning. (tense shift) We're in the dining hall and I'm still half awake and trying to drink some really bitter orange juice and this woman walks up to the group of three or four people I'm standing with. She's wearing teal Rainbows. I should say that the company did a special promotional something where they made teal Rainbows for UNCW. Anyway, this is their debut. The tiny woman walking up to us is debuting them.

And they are ugly. Let me tell you, ugly. And while the woman is talking to us I almost say that. But even I have sense (courtesy) enough not to be mean or rude to someone I don't know (had my friend been wearing them, in this case I might have said something--they're really that bad), so I rephrase the thought and ask, "Wait, are they made of real leather?" Normally they are, these are not.

She goes on to explain how, in fact, they are not made of real leather. They look like rubber styrofoam, if there ever were such an environmentally offensive thing. And as she walks away, I turn to the Colombian roommate and say, "Good gracious those things were ugly. I almost said it, too."

"...Do you know who she was?"

"No, but I know her shoes were ugly."

"Sara. That was the chancellor. Rosemary DePaolo!"

The moral of this story is to think before you tell people what you think. And to always be on the look out for the chancellor, and to know that sometimes she disguises herself with sunglasses so you have to be extra discerning.

And, Chancellor DePaolo, should you ever read this: your shoes were lovely on Tuesday. So you know.

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