Saturday, April 2, 2016

Here's The Story.

So yesterday morning, my big head was on the Today Show.


Yup.
Thursday was ... confusing.

We had all pretty much figured the sign fervor had died down. A week had passed; hits on the original Facebook post had slowed to a normal level. More importantly, the sign itself seemed to be working -- we haven't had to give anyone instructions all week, although I'm sure the snow has helped.

Then I went to my great-aunt's wake. [I'm suddenly relieved that I don't have that many stories that start with funerals.] I met my parents there and afterwards we went to dinner with my grandparents.

When I got back to my car, I had two missed calls and a rather surprising voicemail from the Chef Lady. "You need to call me back right away. We got a call from the Today Show and they want to talk to you..."

After plenty of assurances that no, this wasn't an early April Fool's joke, I found myself making a flurry of phone calls in a restaurant parking lot, fresh snow blowing around my car as I tried to get a grasp on what the heck had just happened.

Our little story had made it into the Washington Post.

And some producers had seen it there.

And now they were talking to me.

It took an hour and a half of arranging and rearranging, the discovery that there wasn't a TV station with available space right then, and some technical difficulties after that, but in the end I found myself [jazzed up on coffee to activate Happy Camp Ashley] Skyping from my parents' dining room. Why there? Well, I was already in town. And their house was 20 minutes closer than mine.

Sometimes life is funny that way.

Of course, that wasn't all there was to it. Before the interview even happened, posts went up on Facebook. Which meant that while I was chatting with a couple guys in New York [one is a Lions fan -- we cannot be friends] my phone was exploding.

Let's lay that one out a bit more clearly.

1. A TV studio couldn't be found.
2. We used Skype instead, because sometimes technology is awesome, to
3. Talk about a Google error, because sometimes technology sucks.
4. Meanwhile, Facebook went nuts.
5. And since I have my push notifications turned on, I had to turn my phone off for several minutes.
6. In that time, the story went around the globe.
7. No joke.

Have I mentioned yet that 2016 is a strange place to live?

This whole story is one big product of its time and place. It couldn't have happened without Google, and the story itself couldn't have gone so far without Facebook. Moreover, the older media is still going strong -- I've now been on TV, on the radio, and in so many newspapers it's scary.

I'm ready for things to die down a bit. Facebook is still a little crazy and while the fifteen minutes have been fun, it's kind of exhausting.

Although if Ellen calls, I'm up to chat.

2 comments:

Ally said...

Ha! This whole thing was hilarious. And you looked super cute, BTW!

rapidcity said...

Wow. A celebrity! Did you record it?