Jennifer Brown

Yesterday I spent the day in fabulous St. Louis, Missouri, visiting a couple of schools and a couple of libraries and generally being all writerly-ish.

There were some real high moments for me on this trip. Two tireless youth services librarians who stuck with me throughout the long day and who showed themselves to be intelligent, approachable, witty ladies with tremendous passion for bringing kids and books together. A school librarian whose smile was infectious and whose charm bubbled over. A student with mad drawing skills who is writing a graphic novel. And that's just the beginning.

I will admit that I had one of *those* moments, where it really slammed down on my head, the fact that I was standing in one of the most beautiful libraries I've ever stepped foot in (if you haven't ever been to the downtown branch of the St. Louis Public Library, you really must get there!)... where all these great books -- many of them books that nurtured my own love of reading, I'm sure -- were on the shelves. Miles of imaginations stacked here and piled there... and among them was... my work. Whoa. It was a staggering realization for me, really. Not a full-of-myself pat-me-on-the-back-wouldja kind of moment, but a, "Holy shit, how did I get here?" kind of moment. I had to be careful not to cry. And also... for the first time... I stepped up to the microphone so nervous I wasn't sure I'd be able to go on.

Speaking of nerves... as I waited for the students to file into the library at my first visit (at a really cool career academy that had such great classes, I kinda wanted to go back to high school), two men walked in, one of them carrying a video camera. He proceeded to tell us that he was going to be taping about 10 minutes of my speech, to include with their video entry into a contest to get President Obama to come speak at their high school graduation. Of course, my first thought was, "Omigosh, Obama might see ME talking about MY book?!" And then my second thought was, "Wait. Isn't he friends with OPRAH?!" Well. A girl can dream.

But anyway, there was one moment out of the whole day where I think my top-notch professionalism really shone through. It went something like this:

MY GUIDE: So, after this visit, do you want to go to lunch?

ME: Yeah!

MY GUIDE: Do you have any dietary restrictions?

ME: Nope.

MY GUIDE: Do you like ice cream?

ME: Ooooh, yes.

MY GUIDE: I'm going to take you to this little local place called Crown Candy.

ME: OMIGOD, I SAW THAT PLACE ON MAN VS. FOOOOOD!!!

Of course, I further made an ass of myself by making a beeline for the counter when we got to Crown Candy and going, "Didn't I see this place on an episode of Man vs. Food? Adam took on the 5-malt challenge, didn't he? And he didn't finish. He only drank four and a half. Right? Riiiight?"

And then I proceeded to order the chocolate banana malt (um, holy yum, it's a good thing I don't live in St. Louis now that I know that exists), and only finished 1/2 of it, proving to myself that my working theory is, indeed, correct: Adam Richman isn't human.

Oh, and my lovely hostesses took a photo of me holding up my malt proudly. I have no shame.

A million photos were snapped. If any get passed on to me, I'll post them. In the meantime, back to my revision dungeon.