My brush with local celebrities...

This post is all about two memories of my brush with local (meaning Utah) celebrities and how I have handled it with the utmost grace and poise. 

You may recall that I love being the center of attention and thrive on public attention even more, especially from famous people...HA! Heck no! I hate being the center of attention ("then why the flip did you become a teacher?" you may be asking yourself. "The high pay scale of course" would be my answer). I literally am dreading all the wedding/baby showers that will/may/please-dear-lord-let-it-happen be thrown for me one day because I hate being the center of attention in that kind of situation. I enjoy inserting my personality by amusing people with a witty comment or if I have consumed enough sugar, a song. But I still get a nasty case of shyness occasionally and sometimes lay awake at night wondering why I did certain things. Sigh, the inner-conflicts of an introvert trying to become an extrovert.

Anywho, when it comes to the rich and famous, I admire from afar. Plus if I was rich and famous, or just rich, I wouldn't people constantly coming up to me and acting like they know me. It just seems fake to me, no offense intended. So, once again, as a refresher, I rarely approach "the famous" because I don't like that attention it brings to me because I get horribly shy and it doesn't feel like a genuine interaction. Again, this is just me...I do this at Disneyland too (try to find a picture of me standing next to a character taken within the last 15 years...I dare you!)

Now the first story has to do with Bronco Mendenhall, who is the head football coach at BYU. Now I love BYU Football, so by natural association, I love Bronco...heh heh just kidding, but I am a huge fan. I think he has a great work ethic, is a good man all around, and he is shy, like me, so I feel a natural connection to that.
Here's a picture if you have never seen him:

He's not that bad looking either...alright he's a stud-muffin (my younger brother says so). But anyway, even though I worked around his offices everyday (the glories of a custodian) I never felt comfortable with the whole "swinging by the office to say hi" deal. Part of it was because I was shy, and the other part of it was that he is shy, and shy people just don't do that to each other. So, the excitement and exuberance I feel towards Mr. Mendenhall was usually shared in the safety of my home with my younger brothers, where no one, especially him, could hear. 

Well, one year I worked the closing Saturday shift, which means I was the one who locked up all the buildings and did the final cleaning checks, blah blah blah. Well, that particular night, there was a volleyball game and so there was a crew of students there taking things down and I was helping because it's just what you did. Well, I needed to go lock down the building that housed the football offices and my boss told me to take a few of the kids with me. So I took my fellow students on a glorious tour of the football offices and gushed, loudly, about how awesome BYU football was and how great the coach was. I thought I was safe, because it was 11pm on a Saturday night. I was so foolish...

I heard a door close down a hallway and whipped around, prepared to chase a sneaky student out of the building if needs be. I expected it to just be the security guard that did his rounds at that time of night. But then much to my horror, it was Bronco Mendenhall. He stared at me, and I stared at him and I could tell from the grin on his face that he had heard every word. I immediately zeroed in on a trashcan and muttered something about checking the garbage and locking up. He said have a good night and disappeared back into his office. I was mortified and wanted to climb into the dumpster outside the building and never come out. Instead, I took back my little tour to the main building, while they gushed about how they got to see the coach in person and how big he was, and did you see his muscles, etc. 

I was sure that Bronco never remembered that incident or me, until about a year and half later, I was hauling some trash down to the dumpsters (yes, 90% of my job involved garbage) as part of my afternoon shift, when Bronco popped out of the locker room and was walking down the same hallway as me, on his way to the Indoor Practice Field. He was a good 30 feet in front of me so I wasn't expecting any sort of interaction. But when he got to the doors that led outside, he pushed one open and waited for me to catch up to him (I wasn't walking fast as it was a very big and heavy bag). When I reached him, he smiled and said, "Thanks for everything you do around here. It's always clean." My response was a hearty "you're welcome" and then I walked to the dumpster and he went to practice. That was the last time I interacted with Bronco at my job, and it just further cemented that he was an awesome guy. Out of all the other coaches offices that I cleaned and took care of all their problems (and trust me, there are a lot!), he was the only one who ever took the time to say thank you to me personally. I really appreciated it. 

Ok, the second celebrity I wanted to mention is this guy: 

If you don't know who this is...SHAME ON YOU! This is Jimmer Fredette, BYU basketball superstar, and 11th draft NBA pick for 2011. And that is pretty much all I know about his stats (and my brothers mostly told me everything). But he is dang-good at basketball and is very famous at BYU. And naturally, because I worked in the buildings that housed all the athletic equipment, I would run into Jimmer every now and then. Now, most BYU students at the time would eagerly rush to him and get an autograph, a picture, his shoe...but not me. I think once when I walked past him in the hallway, we did the whole head nod "hey-what's-up" thing and that was about it. Once, again, I like to give celebrities their space.

But should anyone who happens to know either of these celebrities personally ever read this blog, please express my sincere admiration for what they do and how they live their lives and assure them that my silence did not mean that I did not like them (that is how it is often interpreted, I think) but just wanted to give them space.
...and tell Bronco I still think he's a stud-muffin ;)