Source The real source of the Southwest Glitch.
Growing up as a child of the 80’s and 90’s I watched a lot of Nickelodeon, but only on vacation when we were at our beach house because my parent’s home is located in the boonies and we didn’t have cable when we were kids. My brothers and I had to entertain ourselves by playing outside, a foreign concept to many children these days. But when we went to Ocean City, Maryland we were blessed with cable. To this day my Mom cannot believe that all my brother’s and I wanted to do was to lay around and watch MTV and Nickelodeon. We would spend almost our entire summers at the beach, which allowed us to get caught up on all the music videos (this was back when MTV and VH1 actually played music videos), cartoons, and of course Double Dare Challenges that we missed all throughout the year.
Watching Double Dare was, for my brother Chris and me, pure torture. We KNEW we could do better than those other families if just given one small chance. I would watch and think about all the clever things I would say to Mark Summers, the host of Double Dare.
Well, friends, it happened. I got to meet Mark Summers and say clever things to him. I also got to pie my husband in the face; he got to pie me too. It was like the best marriage counseling ever.
Upon meeting Mark (we’re on a first-name basis now), he asked my husband how long we have been married. Robert got the answer wrong. He was going to get pied just for that alone. Then when I pointed out to Mark that we have actually been married for nine years, not the seven that my darling husband said, he then asked Robert what is our anniversary date. Robert got that wrong too.
The best moment of my entire NINE year marriage:
Watch the whole video here:
I honestly didn’t think my Comic-Con could get any better after that. I mean, how many adults get to live out their childhood fantasies? But like so many times in my life, I was wrong. This time, happily wrong.
If you’ve ever been SDCC then you’ll know what I mean when I say you literally have do not have the time to do everything you want to do. It just isn’t possible. I’ve often times lamented over the fact that I need one of those Time Turner thingys that Hermione uses in Harry Potter. After losing an entire day at the convention because of Southwest I had to push back/miss out on so many things I had in my schedule. One of which was the Evil Ink booth for the four o’clock autograph signing with Claudio Sanchez. Claudio is the mastermind behind one of my favorite comic books, The Amory Wars, and he is the lead singer of my all-time favorite band Coheed and Cambria (named after a husband and wife in The Amory Wars).
Knowing that I wouldn’t have time for the autograph signing, I decided to go check out the booth anyway just to see what they had there. They had Claudio Sanchez. Just hanging out like it was no big deal.
So upon seeing Claudio standing there, I promptly started sweating. What do I say? Should I even say anything? He was holding his young son and talking to his wife, I didn’t want to be a weird stalker and interrupt them. So I started to chicken out and asked the girl working behind the counter at the booth if I could see a Coheed shirt that was on sale. Now it got real awkward because now he knows I know who he is and that I’m a fan. While the girl looks for my shirt, I notice the conversation next to me getting quieter and then stopping altogether. That’s when I decided to woman-up and turned to Claudio and said, “I just want to say, I’m a huge fan.”
You know what happened? He got this giant smile and thanked me for saying that, and then to make an already amazing trip ten times better, he offered to autograph something for me and to take a picture with me. I still cannot believe it. It was one of the best moments of my life.
There are so many amazing stories like mine that happen every year at SDCC. For all intents and purposes, SDCC should be pure hell; you barely sleep, you forget about eating, you’re walking like ten miles a day in sweltering heat, you find yourself surrounded by unwashed nerds, and you are literally at the mercy of huge crowds who make it impossible to get anywhere fast. Yet every year I just want to cry when it’s over because it’s just so much fun and so crazy as well. I’m already planning my trek out to SDCC for next year’s wild ride.
