A few years ago, Ellen Major, owner of the lovely Booktenders’ Secret Garden Children’s Bookstore in Doylestown PA, phoned me in a panic. It was late on a Friday afternoon. Kate DiCamillo was coming to her store that night. Ellen was worried. She was sure that only 3 or 6 people were going to show up for the event, and she really really didn’t want her store to be empty for a big name author. She asked me to come. Unfortunately, I was extremely sick. But Ellen has been very kind to me, and I very much appreciate it. My wife and kids had other obligations that night so I took twice the recommended dose of three kinds of different cold and flu medications then drove myself to Doylestown.
When I arrived, there were about two hundred people, mostly kids, in a shop that comfortably holds 25. Ellen must have made a lot of phone calls that afternoon. It was a sleety, slushy, freezing winter night so everybody had on wet snow clothes. The temperature in the store shot up to a thousand degrees. I remember humidity dripping down the windows like we were inside a car wash. I think my fever must have spiked. Rob and Lisa Papp, who are friends and local author/illustrators (they’re the ones who put me into Stratego and turned my kids into American Girl characters), propped me up in a corner where I tried to blow my nose into a mitten as quietly as possible while alternating between burning up and freezing to death.
I can barely remember the evening except, near the end, Ellen saw me against the back wall. She knows how much I love Kate DiCamillo’s books. (I actually outline her sentences and paragraphs and chapters to see if I can figure out how they work. I think she has a magical way of weaving words and emotions together that makes her stories sing.) Ellen dragged me into this tiny closet-sized stockroom at the back of her store where Kate was sitting behind a folding card table with a bottle of water. She looked a little disheveled and a bit confused. She’d just signed a gazillion books, and I think this might have been her 47th visit on a hundred-stop cross-country tour. She probably didn’t even know what time zone she was in. Ellen said something like: THIS IS PAUL. THERE ARE A HUNDRED PEOPLE IN LINE AT THE REGISTER. TALK AMONGST YOURSELVES. I’VE GOT TO GO! She rushed off and closed the closet door behind her.
I think Kate DiCamillo and I were in the closet together for about 15 minutes. Here is how I remember our conversation:
Me: Hi.
Her: Hi.
Me: I love your work.
Her: Thank you.
Me:…
Her: Are you okay?
Me (trying not to pass out): …
Her (looking like she’s about to pass out): …
Me: Are you okay?
Her:…
Me:…
Her: Actually, I’m kind of missing home.
Me: Honestly, I’m not in a very good place right now.
Her (and she reached across the card table and patted me on the hand when she said this): You don’t have to be in a good place.
Me:…
Her:…
Me: That was a very Kate DiCamilo thing to say.
Her: That’s because I am Kate DiCamillo.
Me: Right.
Her…
Me: Okay. Bye.
And then I left her in the closet. I even closed the door behind me!!
This might all be a virus and medication-induced hallucination, but I’m pretty sure that it’s at least 90% true because even when I’m healthy, I’m not a good visitor for celebrities. See for yourself: http://paulacampora.com/blog/2006/03/01/why-i-dont-write-much-fiction-about-the-pope/
A few Saturdays ago, circumstances put me inside a late night McDonalds where I was surrounded by several groups of teenage girls. They’d spent the earlier part of the evening at their high school homecoming dance. They were still dressed up in sequins and fancy hair, but they’d traded high heels and dates for ballet slippers and fries with friends. I sipped black coffee in a corner booth and jotted down pieces of their conversations into my notebook. I rarely use stuff like this exactly as I find it. But later I will try to create scenes that capture a little bit of the real life good humor, goofy energy, manic intimacies and tender sweetness between friends. Here are a few overheard snippets: