Walking along a street in downtown Brisbane for a late-ish lunch hardly seems the ideal setting for an interesting story, but we set the tale here nonetheless.
Mentally distracted by a rather large workload and an impending important meeting I almost failed to notice the couple come from a sidestreet and turn to walk alongside me. But close only counts with hand grenades and, to be honest, I couldn’t help but notice because of what the young girl was wearing.
Decked out in oh-so stylish ug boots, camo pants and a thick black coat with a big hood pulled around her face. Maybe this is what people wear in the states to avoid attention, but here in Brisbane (capital of the sunshine state) all it’s going to achieve is the opposite even on an overcast day.
I ran my eyes over partly out of curiosity and partly because she was cute. Very cute. In fact she looked just like…
I almost stopped dead. Somehow I managed to cover up my stutter and was only a few steps behind them. Now that I looked I recognised the guy as her guitarist.
Inside a battle was raging. The calm composed Anthony was saying “respect their privacy - she probably hates people coming up to her hence the disguise (albeit cr4ppy). Just keep walking.” Meanwhile the little kid was jumping up and down, running around leaving crayon marks throughout my brain demanding we abandon composure and act like a drooling fanboy.
The so-called ‘mature’ side had just about won the argument when the couple pulled out a map and started looking around, mutering animatedly. They were obviously lost.
So what’s a guy to do?
Especially a guy with a Superman-boy-scout complex?
I mean after all, we have to be friendly and polite to our overseas visitors right?
So I put on my best smile and oh-so-suavely say “G’day. You guys lost?” They both look up at me and I catch a close-up glimpse of the angelic face before she looks down in shock using her hood to cover up.
I give them instructions (the guitarist is very friendly and thanks me warmly, she is more reserved and only comes in now and then) before leaning in and quietly asking “You ARE Avril Lavigne aren’t you?”
An almost-muffled but very cute “yes” is my answer and while I enjoyed the proximity and the conversation (all of a minute and a half or so to this point) I couldn’t help but notice the admission had made her uncomfortable.
She was painfully shy so I wished them well and walked off, returning to my ‘fanboi from afar’ status.
My only regret was that her sunglasses mostly covered up those panda-manga eyes…
Okay, well not the ONLY regret but it’ll do for for now.
A few years back, my husband met Natalie Imbruglia by giving her directions, except he didn’t know who she was. Being a letter carrier, he ends up giving people directions a lot (everyone figures the mailman knows the area, after all), but this stuck out for him because the woman he spoke with was obviously being chauffeured. Some months later we were watching TV and a music video clip or something with her in it came on, and he realized that was the woman he gave directions to. (FWIW, his impression was: cute, polite, nice voice, lovely eyes.)
