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This weekend's other convention.
The first thing I noticed when I got on the light rail this morning was a dwarf with a bright orange wig. The next thing I noticed that the train was much more full than usual - mostly older teenagers.
The orange-hair guy didn't strike me as all that odd, but as the train pulled away I tried to figure out why it was so crowded with teens. The crowd was way too white to be a public school field trip (also, duh, it didn't occur to me until now that public school isn't exactly in session on August 8), and they seemed a little too uniformly nerdy/uncool-looking to be, say, a field trip from a majority-white suburban school. ...Were they from the magnet school for science and math?
The kid in the seat in front of me was turned all the way around, talking excitedly to the kid next to me about manga. Yes, I am slow to catch on. Because it wasn't until he used the word "fanservice" in conversation (as a verb, no less) that the penny dropped.
"Oh!" I said out loud. "It's Otakon this weekend."
"Yes, it's Otakon," said the manga-talker happily. He looked at me: long tasteful flowered skirt, subdued scoopneck shirt, hair-colored hair, lack of makeup, general air of grownup-ness. I could almost hear him thinking A mundane! I can educate her!
"Were you trying to figure out our conversation?" he asked.
"Your conversation seemed pretty straightforward," I said. "I was trying to figure out why my train was so crowded with people who didn't look like light-rail riders. Have a good time."
When I got off the train, there was a big bunch of cosplaying kids hanging out in front of Dunkin' Donuts. Presumably seeing them would've made the Otakon connection clear even to oblivious me.
The orange-hair guy didn't strike me as all that odd, but as the train pulled away I tried to figure out why it was so crowded with teens. The crowd was way too white to be a public school field trip (also, duh, it didn't occur to me until now that public school isn't exactly in session on August 8), and they seemed a little too uniformly nerdy/uncool-looking to be, say, a field trip from a majority-white suburban school. ...Were they from the magnet school for science and math?
The kid in the seat in front of me was turned all the way around, talking excitedly to the kid next to me about manga. Yes, I am slow to catch on. Because it wasn't until he used the word "fanservice" in conversation (as a verb, no less) that the penny dropped.
"Oh!" I said out loud. "It's Otakon this weekend."
"Yes, it's Otakon," said the manga-talker happily. He looked at me: long tasteful flowered skirt, subdued scoopneck shirt, hair-colored hair, lack of makeup, general air of grownup-ness. I could almost hear him thinking A mundane! I can educate her!
"Were you trying to figure out our conversation?" he asked.
"Your conversation seemed pretty straightforward," I said. "I was trying to figure out why my train was so crowded with people who didn't look like light-rail riders. Have a good time."
When I got off the train, there was a big bunch of cosplaying kids hanging out in front of Dunkin' Donuts. Presumably seeing them would've made the Otakon connection clear even to oblivious me.
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You just reminded me of a friend that claimed I went around in "normal-person drag". It's always fun to freak out the kids that think they're freaking you out.
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The other con
(I knew you were talking about Otakon and not Denvention as soon as I saw the author, since I know you live in Baltimore, and the subject line...)
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"And I took my flogger..." she recounted happily. Then she sized me up and stopped to explain. "A 'flogger' is a whip that has different strands to it, and..."
Fortunately, by that point in my clinical training I had mastered the deadpan nod.
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I'd have been tempted to cut her off with, "Yes, dear, I know." If she pressed further, possible responses include, "Did you think your generation invented that kind of thing?" and "I'm a professional. I'm trained to handle things like that" (letting, of course, her imagination fill in values for 'things like that', and, indeed, for 'professional'.)
Of course, I would never do such a thing, because it would be unprofessional and constitute an inappropriate patient-caregiver interaction. <nods seriously; polishes halo>
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I have certainly enjoyed telling the story afterward, though.
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This led to much merry speculation if I would make him eat out of a bowl, etc., as in the book, and I said, mildly, "Well of course not; we don't have a safeword." The guy at the table who was into the BDSM scene stared at me and then just cracked up for two full minutes.
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For real "freaking the mundanes", I don't think I've heard of anything that topped Duke Sir John the Bearkiller's encounter at a gas station on the way home from an SCA event. An old lady asked him if he was in a play or something, since he happened to still be in garb. John just looked at her blankly, and said, "No, ma'am, I'm with this group that's meeting out at the state park. You see, we get together and worship goats."
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