Back from the con and tired as always. Money wasn’t bad–it wouldn’t be enough to justify on if I was doing the full con-hotel and stuff, but as a weekend where I had some odd experiences, crashed in Otter’s guest room, and a chance to see Jennie who’s fantastic, but owing to schedule we generally only get the one con a year to hang out–well, on top of that, making a few hundred bucks on top was just gravy.
Tired, though. Got in last night around five-thirty, unloaded car, and then I turned to Kevin and said "It’s six o’clock, and I’m going to get into my bathrobe and go lay down." Which he agree was a good plan. So the rest of the evening was spent in bed, not entirely awake, watching Wild Russia re-runs and pacifying the various animals who wanted to come and inform us that we had been gone FOREVER AND EVER and they were SAD and required immediate petting to prevent them from DYING OF MISERY. (Except Ben, who would never admit that he was dying of misery, but forgave us for having left him behind and ventured into god-knew-what ninja-infested countryside, if we would allow him to lay draped across my legs with his head on Kevin’s thigh. I do not know how that was comfortable for him. It certainly wasn’t for me.)
I got up this morning late, following a bizarre nightmare where I fought possessed warriors through a high-end grocery store (I could turn into a boar. Boars are astonishingly efficient at possessed warrior slaying, and can really mess up a shelf full of canned goods as well.) got to the final villain, a squat, heavily wrapped woman shrieking invectives at us, and when I reached over and grabbed her hat, she began screaming. I tore her hat off with a heavy ripping noise and found it was attached to some kind of waxed paper–whereupon it was revealed that she was actually a twenty pound bag of dogfood, which then spilled all over the floor.
At that point, I felt it would be prudent to wake up, because clearly that way lay madness, and perhaps a broom.
I staggered into the studio, and found that there were five deer standing in the front yard and gnawing on my swamp jessamine. I opened the window and yelled "Shoo!" They didn’t seem to care. I started snapping my fingers and yelling "HEY!" like I do when the beagle is misbehaving, and this got them moving, although it was less headlong flight than a vaguely concerned amble. Sigh.
The theme of this convention was apparently "Oh god, I’m getting too old for this." College conventions are increasingly exhausting…everybody looks so YOUNG. They’re nice people, the con is well run, but when a hot guy walks by and you realize that you lost your virginity before he was born, you start to feel…really…yeah. Kevin’s a trooper, but after a point, one must face the fact that these people are much, much closer in age to his kids than to us, and eventually you wind up at sushi with other people in their thirties going, "Oof. We’re getting waaaaay too old for this."
At one point, Jennie called me over to the table to help her–a nice boy was trying to convince her to give him some free hand-painted boxer shorts so that he could strip down to them during the Geek Auction, which she really didn’t want to do–they’re not cheap shorts, and advertising is hardly necessary when everyone already knows you–but he was SO NICE and SO PERSISTENT.
"They’re kind of thin material," she said weakly. "And you’ll be under spotlights."
"It’s okay! That’s fine!"
I sized up the would-be stripper, and asked "How old are you?"
"…eighteen?"
"Oh hell no," said Jennie.
"Nope nope nope," I said, realizing in the back of my brain that I sounded like a yip-yip from Sesame Street.
"Nope nope nope nope," said Kevin, from our table, catching the end of this.
"But it’s legal!" said the kid.
"But it’s not right!" said Jennie.
He wandered off. Jennie turned to me and embraced me in sudden terror. "Thank you."
It may be time to stop doing the college cons.
Which is a shame, because I have some wonderful fans at this con that I’m always glad to see–many of whom were indeed born during the Clinton administration, and they’re great people and awesome to run into–but yeah. When you find yourself thinking "Does your mother know you’re going around dressed like that?" without irony, when you have a sudden burning desire to make Reagan jokes just to see how many people laugh…it may be time to reconsider.
It’s not that they’re too young, it’s that they’re making me old by contrast waaaay before my time.
