It usually starts with someone being much more famous than the 'graph seeker. The celebrity could be from sports, movies, television, politics (?), literature, or from some other avenue of popular culture. There is something of a supplicant going before royalty vibe in how 'graph seekers line up to petition the great and powerful. I suppose I am arrogant enough that I don't like the idea of putting anyone on that kind of pedestal above ME.
But I do respect accomplishment. Recently my local comic book store (Hi, Downtown Comics on 10th Street) featured a local writer who, with his writing partner, had a recently published Batman story for DC Comics (Hi, Troy Brownfield!). The book was an anthology with Troy's story, "Short Straw", the best thing about the whole book. Not even close. Now I know that Troy has a writing partner so he probably only wrote half of this story, but both halves were really good. :)
Anyway, Troy was in the store signing copies of the book for fanboys and fanboy emeriti like me. I told him I don't do autographs but that I respect anyone who can get paid to write stuff and shook his hand. I then had a nice little conversation with him and now we are "friends" on Facebook. Now why is that not enough for some people?
Why the need for them to put pen to paper? Some primitive peoples have refused to have their pictures taken for fear of losing their souls to the camera and the camera wielder. Do the autograph seekers think they capture some part of the soul that curls and swirls in the letters bleeding out in ink? I don't know.
I know why I asked for one of the damnable things. I love my dad. Should type that in the past tense since he died back in 1995, but the love continues even if the life does not. So, love it is. My mom has always told us stories. Most of them involved people she knew in her misspent youth who died tragically and graphically as her maternal warning system related the stories to children that I now think were too young to hear them.
Strangely, there are several stories involving my dad that have only been shared since Hazel's little boy Ray shuffled off this mortal coil. One of these stories involved a small orange construction paper football. It was not a special football. Not at all.
Well, unless you think the signature of Johnny Unitas might be valuable. For those of you who have no idea of sports or football or the NFL, Johnny Unitas is the Hall of Fame quarterback of the Baltimore Colts who Payton Manning and many others consider the very best quarterback to ever touch a football. So that may have added to the value. Oh, and Raymond Berry's signature was on there too. Who is Raymond Berry? Well, until Jerry Rice came along, you could make a very convincing argument that he was the best wide receiver to ever touch a football. Oh, and it had John Mackey's signature on it too. Yep, you guessed it. John Mackey was one of the greatest tight ends to ever play the game too and he was also a teammate of Unitas and Berry on the Colts. Art Donavan was a force on defense but made more of a name for himself as a character telling stories about his more famous friends on NFL Films and ESPN.
And apparently there were other signatures as well. Everyone who was anyone on that great Colts team of long ago. I wonder if some part of their souls really were captured in the pedestrian artistry of their signatures. Some other tribes eat the hearts of their kills to gain its strength and power. That could be very interesting for me considering I ate the little orange football when I was about two years old.
My mother impressed upon me while she told me this story that she was the solitary reason why I still drew breath while not in a coma or some other debilitating state. Thanks mom.
But, years after I was told this story, a funny thing happened. I was at a great big convention associated with my work and Johnny Unitas was there as a featured guest of some great corporation that I can't remember. Funny how the corporation brought Mr. Unitas out there to call attention to them and all I can remember is Johnny U.
I got in the insanely long line and waited my turn like all the other supplicants. Once before the man, I could not help but tell him the story I told you about the orange football. He laughed and asked if it tasted good. I told him it must have since I finished it all. He laughed again and with an odd grip on his pen (three fingers on top of the pen with his thumb below - presumably from all his injuries from the NFL), he signed a picture of himself from the glory of his youth.
That is the story of the one and only autograph I have ever collected in my life. And I at least know why I went for the one that I got. I was not trying to capture a piece of Johnny U. I had very little interest in the Baltimore Colts. It was an altogether different soul I was trying to re-capture. At least some small part.
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