Breakfast With the School master

I got up early today, rather than succumb to the ease of rolling over and staying under the blankets, and went to my favorite eatery to work on a revision of my short story.

I settled in with some eggs and potatoes, opened my two dollar notepad, and took my red pen in hand. As I reached for my coffee, I was startled. There, not more than six feet away, I saw one whose fame, fortunes, and willpower are known throughout the Willamette Valley. A woman who hailed from the ancient lands of the east (Pennsylvania), and voyaged to Oregon to command the winds of change to heal a conflicted and disparate land (the Portland Public School System). Before she completed that crowning achievement, she was called by the gods of the information age, and thus ascended to a higher firmament (she left Portland Public Schools for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation). This scribe had seated himself within the presence of former Portland Public School Superintendent Vicki Phillips.

It is interesting how fame -coverage in papers and television- makes someone seem half again larger than they are in real life. I would say that Vicki Phillips is about five and a half feet tall with slight shoulders. She is almost petite. It's strange how perceptions are formed when one views another only through news or Hollywood cameras. When a person achieves a high level of notoriety, they are perceived to be taller and broader than the everyman. They become re-imaged by a kind of heroic archetype drawn from our collective unconscious.

While I knew she was going to be in and out of town for a time, I certainly never expected to meet her in person. She saw that I recognized her, there was an exchange of smiles, and I went back to my writing. I looked down at the sentence I had just written, and saw that I had a dangling participle. I felt small and ashamed.

Tags: I ran into Vicki Phillips