This is my favourite story I've heard in a long time:
Dave
was in Toronto the other day to go to a conference with the Alibaba
people. He arrived at a downtown hotel – One King West, where he had never been
before – and he was immediately annoyed to discover that they only
had valet parking and he was out $35 before he even got out of the
car.
When
Dave entered the hotel lobby, he was confused by the two banks of
elevators, and when he asked an employee where he was supposed to go,
the man waved in the general direction of the elevators and said,
“The conference rooms are on the second floor.”
Dave
entered an elevator, and as he began looking at the floor buttons, an
old lady got on as well, so Dave moved to the rear. As he did so, he
noticed that there was no button for the second floor on this
elevator. The old lady, who was parked right in front of the buttons
asked, “What floor?”
Dave
replied, “The second, but it doesn't appear...”
“Yeah.
You're on the wrong elevator. This one just goes to the residences.”
And then she punched the button for the 36th
floor.
As
Dave swivelled his disbelieving eyes between the back of the old
lady's head and the floor indicator as it counted off the climb up
those thirty-six stories, he realised that this hunched and
frail-looking cadaver with the frizzy grey hair was freaking Margaret
Atwood.
How
hard would it have been for Atwood to select the Door Open button and
let Dave off immediately to find the proper elevator?
Instead, because he was a gentleman and had moved to the rear for
her, Dave could only glare at the back of freaking Margaret Atwood's thinning grey
afro and chant to himself no-talent-overrated-hack (his words) over and over up thirty-six floors, watch her toddle off when the
doors opened, and then stew alone for the thirty-six story ride
back to the lobby.
Freaking
Margaret Atwood.
When
Dave was telling us this story, Ken suggested that he should have
stepped forward and said, “Oh no, but you'll make me late for my
rendezvous with my Handmaiden.”
And
Dave said, “No, what I should have done was leaned forward and pressed all the buttons like Will Ferrell in Elf.
'Look! A Christmas tree!' And then get off at the next floor and walk
back down to the second.”
I got some good reactions to this story when I shared it on Facebook, but my favourite was Kyler's photoshopping:
Freaking
Margaret Atwood.
Kennedy told this story to a few friends at University, and they all had one of two reactions: they were either shocked to hear that Atwood was still alive or they had a similar story of their own to share. When I asked my mother on the phone why she hadn't commented on the story on facebook, she said that she didn't want to upstage me with her own tale:
Back in the '90s, my Mum and a friend of hers went into Toronto to see Pierre Trudeau read from his memoir. As they were sitting in a cafe afterwards, Mum whispered to her friend, "I think that's Margaret Atwood at that table over there." The friend glanced over, turned back to my mother, and said, "Yeah. That's her. I know her."
Mum, a longtime fan, said, "Oh, do you think you could introduce me?" The friend's eyes went icy and she said, "No."
She then explained that some years earlier, she and her husband -- a well-known Canadian publisher -- had been living in London and one night they threw a dinner party for a bunch of Canadian authors who happened to be in the city. It was a very successful evening, with good food and excellent conversation -- please dear, call me Peggy, all my friends do -- and when they were parting at the door, Atwood embraced her hostess and said, "Thank you so much for the wonderful evening, we absolutely must get together again"; that sort of thing.
Just a couple of days later, as this woman was walking down the street, she saw Atwood walking towards her. She waved, beaming, and as they were just about to meet up, she said, "Oh Peggy, imagine meeting you..." But Atwood scowled down her nose at her hostess from just a few nights earlier, and kept walking. An absolute snub that left the woman feeling pained and ridiculous. So, no, she wasn't going to walk over to Atwood in the cafe to introduce my mother.
I don't know if that trumps Dave's elevator story, but it does illustrate that Atwood hasn't simply allowed herself to become eccentric with age; she was a young curmudgeon, too.
Freaking. Margaret. Atwood.
Kennedy told this story to a few friends at University, and they all had one of two reactions: they were either shocked to hear that Atwood was still alive or they had a similar story of their own to share. When I asked my mother on the phone why she hadn't commented on the story on facebook, she said that she didn't want to upstage me with her own tale:
Back in the '90s, my Mum and a friend of hers went into Toronto to see Pierre Trudeau read from his memoir. As they were sitting in a cafe afterwards, Mum whispered to her friend, "I think that's Margaret Atwood at that table over there." The friend glanced over, turned back to my mother, and said, "Yeah. That's her. I know her."
Mum, a longtime fan, said, "Oh, do you think you could introduce me?" The friend's eyes went icy and she said, "No."
She then explained that some years earlier, she and her husband -- a well-known Canadian publisher -- had been living in London and one night they threw a dinner party for a bunch of Canadian authors who happened to be in the city. It was a very successful evening, with good food and excellent conversation -- please dear, call me Peggy, all my friends do -- and when they were parting at the door, Atwood embraced her hostess and said, "Thank you so much for the wonderful evening, we absolutely must get together again"; that sort of thing.
Just a couple of days later, as this woman was walking down the street, she saw Atwood walking towards her. She waved, beaming, and as they were just about to meet up, she said, "Oh Peggy, imagine meeting you..." But Atwood scowled down her nose at her hostess from just a few nights earlier, and kept walking. An absolute snub that left the woman feeling pained and ridiculous. So, no, she wasn't going to walk over to Atwood in the cafe to introduce my mother.
I don't know if that trumps Dave's elevator story, but it does illustrate that Atwood hasn't simply allowed herself to become eccentric with age; she was a young curmudgeon, too.
Freaking. Margaret. Atwood.
