I met folk singer michelle shocked at my terrible job

      I'd like to tell you about the best celebrity encouter I've ever had.* A few years ago, I was working the morning shift at the hostel in downtown DC where I was a clerk. A woman came to the desk and handed me room key. She looked really familiar. She was wearing a cool hat and carring a Razr scooter, so she also looked fly as hell. I gave her my standard 'I hope you had a nice stay!' greeting and looked for her room number in the system as she walked towards the door. I pulled up the room and jumped a little as I read the name: Shocked, Michelle. I quickly turned to look back at her as the door closed behind her; yup, it was definitely Michelle Shocked.

     Michelle Shocked was huge in my house growing up, and I had spent my entire life thinking she was approximately as famous as Joni Mitchell or k.d. lang (other singers my mom played frequently). So obviously, the second the door closed, I started freaking out. We weren't allowed to have phones at the desk, so I sent this frantic email to my mom:

   

  I then ran to tell my coworkers and they were all like "Um...who is that?" I wasn't too surprised by this -- almost no one was there because, as you maybe caught from the email, it was 8:55 AM. I just figured that the few coworkers who were there somehow had missed out on this cultural touchstone. This would not dull my joy. I had met a STAR. 

     For the rest of the day, I ran around excitedly telling people I had seen Michelle Shocked. The only people who knew who she was were my parents and my sister (all of whom I called to regale with the details, obvs). Everyone else reacted with confusion when I joyfully told them about my encouter.** I couldn't believe it! My lofty childhood image of Michelle Shocked as a late 90s folk icon was shattered. 

the legend herself

 

   Because of the conversations with my coworkers, I idly Googled Michelle Shocked to see if I could find any information about her. I was shocked (haha) to find out she has a kind of sordid history and in recent years has taken all of her music off of the internet. She is also kind of homophobic now, which is insane, because look at her? I try not to let that information ruin one of my only positive memories of working in a hostel. I saw a folk legend! And she had a scooter! Great day at work.

xoxo,

evt

* Okay, fine. My actual best celebrity encounter was when I met Gaby Dunn at Comet Ping Pong after a Mal Blum show and forced them to make nice smalltalk with me for probably much longer than they wanted to be making nice smalltalk with a small gay stranger. Absolutely exhilarating. 

** It is maybe also worth noting that nothing nice ever happened to me when I was working at the hostel. My last day working there, I had to stay 45 minutes late to call an ambulence for an incredibly old man (like 60 percent of the guests at this hostel were seemingly over the age of 102) and he peed on me while we were waiting for the ambulence and I was like you know what? On brand for this job. So it was especially glamorous to see a CELEBRITY at work and have a celebrity story, instead of my normal work stories about being verbally abused by middle aged men who thought their rooms would be bigger or elderly men who thought the "women would be hotter here" (??).