Do you know who I am?

"No deary, but if you ask at the nurse's station up front, they'll tell you."


The following story is true. The names have been changed to protect the search engines.

When I was in college I did an internship with an arena football team. I did most of their day-to-day PR work. One day I had to attend the cheerleader / dance squad tryouts so I could write a press release about the girls that got selected. I know, horrible fate, right?

We invited a couple of "celebrity judges" to help with the selection. I use the term celebrity loosely because, well, this was Tallahassee after all. Turns out I didn't know how far into the barrel we were going.

I was walking down the line asking politely the names of all our guests --- I needed to write them down so I could include it in the release. A local radio DJ, I think a former beauty queen... Everyone was being very friendly and good-natured, and at the end of the line a thin, dark-haired woman just stared at me. I looked back, and after a beat she turned to the lady next to her and said "Well! I GUESS he doesn't know who I am!"

Having only been in town a few years and working as an intern at that, I thought perhaps I'd missed something. I said "No, ma'am, umm I'm sorry?" Thinking she'd tell me she was, perhaps, the state secretary of education or something and I just didn't know better. Certainly someone copping that sort of 'tude would be recognizable by her name?

She deemed me fit to be let in on the secret. "I'm Julie Monta----".

You know how in cartoons when they used to ring up the old-style cash registers and the "no sale" flags pop up? That was probably my expression.

"Hmmph". She sided. It probably was added insult to injury that I had to ask her to spell it to make sure I got it right. The name meant nothing to me.

I found out a bit later on she was the weekend TV evening news anchor for the local NBC or CBS or whatever affiliate. Mind you, Tallahassee is, what, something like the 120th biggest media market in the US. Rah.


Seems like it's never the Jimmy Stewarts of the world who say "Don't you know who I am?" It's the D-listers that think having played "2nd Ex-Girflriend" in a straight-to-DVD teen movie that think they can throw their weight around.