Fame-ish, Part 3

Ok, it's on like Donkey Kong. Time to complete what I started last Thursday. This should be Threesday instead of Tuesday for all the trilogy action going on. We should all be three-stepping with joy to be witnessing this piece of history. We should...yeah, that's all I got. A little help?

Here we go: The most famous I've ever been was at the height of my work at UC Santa Barbara. For a couple of years, I worked in a very busy advising office for the College of Letters and Science. During our most hectic times at the beginning and end of each quarter, I would be advising over 100 students a day. These students would range from freshmen looking to plan their schedules to seniors double-checking that they truly were graduating. That might not seem like a fame-producing situation to you, but I was a minor celebrity in the Goleta and Santa Barbara areas for a few years.

I remember going to get some food somewhere once, and the guy at the register looked up at me. "Hey, man, I know you from L&S, right?" he asked. I told him he did, and I actually remembered helping him a few weeks before then. He said he would be coming in again soon to make an appointment, and then he pushed some buttons on the register and said, "Ok, that's uh, 60 cents." I looked down at my food and knew that it should be closer to $8. "Are you sure?" I asked. "Yeah; thanks for all your help and I'll see you again soon."

The same thing happened when my lovely wife and I went to the Coffee Bean for an iced drink one hot weekend day. The young lady at the register remembered me and quickly punched all the holes in one of their frequent-drinker cards. She handed it to me with a smile and said, "For next time."

(Random side note: We once went to that same Coffee Bean, and the guy behind the counter had a sign saying that if we answered his trivia question correctly, we'd get a free drink. I was eager to see what he had. "Pick a category," he said. "Geography, History, Literature, Sports, or Military History." I was an English major, but I was scared off by how random that could be, so I took sports. "What NBA franchise has won the most championships?" he asked. "The Celtics," I said, immediately after he finished. "Wrong," he replied. "No I'm not," I said, a little ticked off. "Just kidding; you're right. Almost everyone guesses the Bulls," he said. I ordered a more expensive drink than I normally would have, partly because it was free but mainly because he pissed me off.)

Another time, we went to Something's Fishy (a Japanese restaurant) and got free food because the waiter remembered me helping him. Yet another time, we were handed a dessert menu with a wink and told it was on the house at a different restaurant. Please note: all I did for these students was answer their questions and help them fulfill their requirements. I never bent any rules or anything like that for them, but they all treated me like their guy inside the system.

This happened almost everywhere. I'd be walking through Costco and have someone stop me to ask a question about the Area E requirement. I'd go to Circuit City and have a guy say, "Can I help you find something - hey, you're the advisor guy, right? How many upper division units do I need again?" This might seem annoying to some of you, but I frickin' loved it. If my lovely wife and I were out to dinner and two people next to us were talking about classes, I'd have to really hold back from doing some off-site advising. If they were speaking incorrectly about something, I needed to be physically restrained from setting them right.

My fame actually grew a little more after leaving Letters and Science and joining Orientation Programs. To 8,000 people a summer, I was "the guy in the suit." While I didn't run into those people on a daily basis off campus, for six weeks a year I couldn't walk anywhere at UCSB without being stopped and asked multiple questions.

When fall quarter came around, I was as close to a rock star that an academic advisor can get. (That's not very close at all, for those of you scoring at home.) Many of the new freshmen recognized me, and not knowing a lot other people on campus yet, they would stop me ask directions, opinions, add/drop options, etc. Only once did I pull the whole "fake call on a cell phone" routine, and that was just because I really needed a burrito and nothing was going to stand in my way. With 20,000 students on campus potentially stopping me, I did what I had to in order to make it to the Chilitos cart unscathed.

With great power comes great responsibility though. As someone who represented UCSB to thousands of people, I had to remember that while out and about. I monitored my public alcohol consumption, because I never knew in whose eyes I could be losing all credibility. Basically, I was like Lindsay Lohan. A male, responsible, non-millionaire, fully-clothed Lindsay Lohan of legal drinking age and not hounded by paparazzi. Just like her.

The whole experience was great, and I truly felt famous for those years in Santa Barbara. Coming from the Los Angeles area, Santa Barbara will always feel like a small town to me, and that was epitomized by the frequency in which I was recognized. And to me, being stopped and recognized in public equals fame. Sure, it didn't have the groupies that came along with my Power Ranger experience, but I'm sure that gets boring after a while. Yeah right.

So there you go, gentle readers. Now you know all about my rises and falls from power (or Power, if you will). I thank you for letting me relive these moments. Who knows, maybe something will happen and I'll be forced to move UOPTA up to fifth on the list. Hey, do you have anything to say that I might be interested in hearing? ptklein@gmail.com is the place to go if that's the case; all the cool kids area doing it. Yes, Mom, I'm calling you one of the cool kids. Enjoy it.