Remember how I recently said it is very hard to embarrass me? I think I said something about having a thick skin, the result of being dubbed a geek for most of my life. Well, last night my boyfriend proved that it is most definitely possible to embarrass me – and oh boy did he do it in style!
For the last month and a half, I have been looking forward to attending a lecture called “Witness to Demotion: The Rise and Fall of Planet Pluto,” to be given by Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson. I think Dr. Tyson is unbelievably cool – he takes unbelievably complicated astrophysical subjects and makes regular people understand them, and he gets you to laugh while he’s doing it. For one of my Christmas gifts, my mom pre-ordered his new book (The Pluto Files) for me because she knew how badly I wanted to read it. For the record, I think Pluto is awesome, regardless of its planetary status. The lecture, highlighting the book, was announced shortly after Christmas, and I jumped all over it – bought tickets to attend as soon as I could, and I told Nicole about it, too (a fellow Plutophile and Dr. Tyson fan). We have been plotting with each other about how awesome the lecture would be for weeks, and we sat and read the book together as soon as it was released.
A bit of background: Alex does not always see eye to eye with me and Nicole when it comes to the subject of Pluto.
So yesterday arrived. Nicole and I were prepared. Each of us had our books in hand when we arrived at the American Museum of Natural History for the lecture. The lecture was great. At the end Dr. Tyson announced he’d be signing books in the lobby for anyone that was interested. Everyonewas interested, which is a testament to how engaging this guy really is. And so we waited in the line of extreme longness to get our copies of The Pluto Files signed.
It was hot. It was crowded. Alex was a good sport and waited with us. As we got closer to the front of the line, I started to chicken out. This was one of my science idols. I wasn’t sure I could handle interacting with him. So I turned to Alex, handed him my book, and said he might need to hand Dr. Tyson the book for me. He found this bizarre, but took the book. Little did I know, the wheels in his head were whirling around at a dangerous pace.
And so it was that after about a 40 minute wait I arrived at the front of the line with my dear boyfriend and my book to have Dr. Tyson sign the front page. The following is an approximation of the way that interaction went:
Alex: hands book to Dr. Tyson, “That’s for Christina.”
Dr. Tyson: “And where is Christina?”
Me: “That’s me.”
Alex: “Yeah, you’ve got a disbeliever here.”
Dr. Tyson: “A disbeliever?” Looks at me with amusement. “What do you mean?”
Alex: “She’s not sure she believes this whole Pluto thing.”
Me: Speechless with embarrassment, can only open and close my mouth silently. I can feel my body start to overheat.
Dr. Tyson: Looks at me as if I have 14 heads sprouting from my left elbow. “I see… well let me check the page… Ok… and how do you spell Christina?”
Me: Barely able to spell my own name, wanting to crawl away and hide from the shame of Dr. Tyson thinking I am questioning his entire book. I am now sweating profusely, and a little bit wishing I had not asked Alex to hand Dr. Tyson my book.
Alex: “C-h-r-i-s-t-i-n-a”
Dr. Tyson: Signs the book, hands it back, smiling the whole time.
That’s it. Well, it’s not it. Because here is what he wrote:
“To Christina, We can surely agree on page 159. Neil deGrasse Tyson”
Want to know what’s on page 159? A comic from a newspaper in Montreal that contains a drawing of Pluto. The headline reads: “News Item: Now Pluto Is NOT a Planet” and Pluto itself is saying “Like I’m supposed to give a s**t?”
Mortified! Horrified! I’m not sure I can ever go to AMNH again for fear of Dr. Tyson seeing me and remembering I am the girl who thinks he’s full of crap! Alex will probably tell you he was trying to ensure Dr. Tyson interacted with me, and the best way he could think of to have that happen was to create conflict. He and I argue about Pluto’s status all the time – he is not as sentimental towards the now-dwarf as I am. I don’t think he anticipated my level of star-struck muteness when faced with the prospect of actually speaking to Dr. Tyson.
But at least my book got signed…
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