Too Many Old Ladies

    My internship consists of several key activities: reading, critiquing, putting stuff in envelopes, and impersonating my superiors. This last is usually in the form of: "Hello [insert sad agent's name here], I'm not going to publish this thing you sent me, and I'm so busy that I'm having some random intern write this for me. Have a nice day!" But sometimes I get to be a Life Model Decoy out in the real world.
    A few weeks back, my boss happened to mention to me that one of her authors was having a book release party that, sadly, she could not attend. She asked if I could go in her place, and of course I said "Heck yes!" because one of the most important parts of being an intern is Acting Keen. In fact, I was genuinely excited by the prospect. I had never been to a book release party before, and I would be there as a Stand-In for the Editor (aka an Important Person), and best of all, there would probably be free food.
     Well, it turned out, once I was given more of the details, that the party was being held in a bookstore way up outside of walking distance, in the northern bit of the city. I would have to take the subway to a new and unfamiliar location. It was a daunting prospect, but not too crazy. And I had agreed to do this. And again, free food.
      And so the day arrived, and I left work early and got onto the subway. I had the address of the place, I knew how to get there, and I had a fairly murky sense of what I would be walking into, but at least I knew the important details. And really, all I had to do was get there, tell the author that her editor said "Hi", get some free food, and leave. Simple. I had given myself plenty of time for the subway, but I hadn't counted on what were, apparently, a succession of "train delays". I don't know what those trains were doing, but they weren't moving, and so I stood there in the humid and far-too-crowded subway car, trying not to look at my watch. And somehow, my plenty-of-time turned into not-much-time-at-all.
     I finally arrived at my stop, sweating and irritated, and I ran run down the street and then back up the street, trying to find south. I got it on the second guess. And then I speed-walked as fast as I could down one block, and then another, and then the bookstore was not where I had been sure it would be. It was, in fact, one more block over. At this point I was only spending about a fifth of my energy on walking. The rest was dedicated to cursing out the universe in my head.
      Well, I finally found the bookstore, five minutes late, and I fully expected to walk into the middle of the reading portion of the event, and to have a whole crowd of people turn and make faces at me for being late. My only option would clearly be to shout "Train delays! I'm sorry!" and leave before anyone got a good look at my face.
    Instead, I walked into a tiny bookstore, in which a small group of people were wandering around and talking amongst themselves. Almost no one looked over at me as I stood, out of breath and dripping, in the doorway.
      Having made the trip and found my destination, and when I could breathe once more, my next step was to introduce myself to the author. I wasn't overly nervous about this. I had been told that the author was a very friendly eighty-year-old woman who might, I was warned, possibly call me "dear". And so I scanned the room, There were- I counted- fourteen people in the bookstore, and at least eight of them were friendly-looking old women.
     I hadn't planned for this. Of all of the problems I had foreseen for this trip, the issue of too many old ladies had not occurred to me.
    I stood around in the corner and studied everyone in the room, trying to figure out which of them looked like they might have written a book. A few of them sent weird looks back at me. Finally, I noticed that the milling around seemed to generally be converging on one particular old woman, and so I made a guess and went for it.
    She was very nice, and it turned out that she was, in fact, the author, and she didn't once call me "dear".
    The formal reading section of the event had been cancelled, for no apparent reason, and so everyone just talked amongst themselves, I stood around, attempting to stay out of the way of the various milling old ladies, and occasionally eating some of the free food, which was pretty much the only part of my plan that had come through for me. After an hour-or-so, I said good-bye, sent one more awkward glance around the room, and left.
    Would I do it again? You bet. That free food was good.