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I’m quite an open-minded and well-informed person, but there are many famous people I wouldn’t recognize even if they came up to me and bit me. That includes Selma Blair, who, according to her 2022 memoir, actually walks up to people and bites them. (Celebrities who have bitten the actress include Kate Moss, Seth MacFarlane, and Sienna Miller.)
When it comes to celebrity identification, I find the lack of recognition kind of cute. All summer I shared stories of readers who knowingly interacted with a famous person, even if only for a short time. Today we hear from readers who needed to be told what just happened.
When Julie Penndorf was a student of the District, she worked at Victoria’s Secret at the SouthPark Mall in Charlotte.
“In the summer of 1997 I saw a man in the store buying his wife anything she wanted,” Julie wrote.
The bill came to nearly $1,000. Julie checked the man’s credit card and gave him the receipt to sign. He wrote his name: “James Smith.”
After the couple left, a colleague asked Julie how it felt to get the man’s autograph.
“I looked at her questioningly and said, ‘James Smith?’ She shouted, ‘You just served LL Cool J!’”
Years ago, Dale Wall regularly rode the train between San Diego and Los Angeles with her then-toddler Taylor.
“I’ve always opted for a seat in the front of the car because it gave my nervous kid more room to move around without getting in the way of anyone,” wrote Dale, who now lives in Memphis. On one drive, a middle-aged man asked if he could sit next to them, explaining that those seats had more legroom than those further down the car. “I pointed to my daughter and told her he was driving at his own risk.”
The man sat down and didn’t seem upset at all as Taylor wiped her Cheerio and raisin-stained fingers on his jacket. He even helped Dale unload all the children’s paraphernalia she was traveling with after the train arrived in LA
After they went their separate ways, a woman who appeared to have been sitting behind Dale said to her, “Burt Bacharach is a really nice guy, isn’t he?”
“I don’t know,” Dale said, strapping her toddler into the stroller. “I’ve never met him.”
The woman laughed and walked away, shaking her head.
In 1995, Russell Hughes of Falls Church was returning to Hawaii on a business trip. He’d spent his last night in Honolulu painting the city and decided to keep the party going while he waited for his flight home.
“I found the bar closest to my gate, ordered a drink while sitting in my chair, and then started chatting to the couple sitting next to me,” he wrote. “Typical bar talk – nothing too personal – but while we were chatting, people came up to the woman and asked for an autograph on a number of occasions.”
Russell was a little curious, but didn’t want to appear clueless either. He ignored the occasional interruption.
After about 30 minutes — and at least two drinks — the pair got up to catch their flight. Finally, when another autograph dog appeared, Russell blurted out, “Who the hell are you?”
The woman replied, “Oh, I’m nobody,” and walked out.
Russell wrote, “I turned and asked others in the bar who the mystery patron was, and several people shouted ‘Juliette Lewis’ at the same time.”
From one airport to another: Early one morning in the 1990s, Susan Taylor was at LAX Airport to visit her family in Wisconsin. As she stood in line at a newsstand, she noticed that the man in front of her was wearing an immaculate pair of leather sneakers, the largest and most exquisitely made shoes she had ever seen.
“I remember thinking that to have such custom-made shoes, the wearer must be very successful,” wrote Susan of Newport Beach, California.
The man paid for his newspaper, then began tearing it apart, keeping part and asking the cashier to throw out the rest. Seeing the confused look on Susan’s face, the man said, “I only read the section on sports.”
Susan said they should share the paper as she reads everything but the sports section.
“He laughed quickly, gave me a bright smile, handed me the rest of the newspaper, tucked the sports section under his arm and walked away,” Susan wrote.
As Susan watched the man stride down the hall, the penny dropped.
“The clerk started laughing when I saw the shocked expression on my face,” she wrote. “I had just met Michael Jordan!”
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