Day with Sean

I bow to DeeDee's account
This is the beginning of my own personal tribute to Sean Astin. On February 22, 2003, he moved from being my second favorite actor to being my favorite actor.
We had just arrived at A&M. We took goofy pictures near the coke machine that bore the TX A&M symbol. We walked about looking for the ticket booth. We found it and stood in line to receive our tickets. Dee was excited that it bore "Baldwin Astin" on the envelope. We walked upstairs and then down and back up. We decided to sit down on big red comfy leather cushions near a row of windows.
Suddenly, I heard a group of people climbing the stairs and walking in front of us. There was a convention in the exhibit hall below us, and I just figured that they were doing a student tour...but to my astonishment it wasn't.
A medium-build guy surrounded by people in suits stopped in front of us and took off his sunglasses. "Wow, the space in here is great!" I grabbed Dee's arm in amazement. My heart stopped--"Dee, that's SEAN ASTIN!!!" "What? Where?" "There!" I pointed to him standing in front of the theather entrance. His promoter walked by us, and I called out, "Sir, can we get his autograph?"
He stopped and paused, "Umm wait a minute...let me see and ask him when I come back up here." He came back up the stairs, and I gave him a smile." He kept his promise. Sean was less than 50 feet away and was talking about Sundance. I could hear the promoter say, "Sean, can you please sign some autographs for these two who drove 3 hours to see you?" (That's how far I told the man.) "How far? Sure." I could feel him approaching but kept looking down to keep my cool. My heart was racing out of my chest. I looked up and was surprised to see him REALLY there. (Dee and I both agreed that we figured he would sit at the table in front of the entrance...not come over to us!) He looked at me with hand out, "Hi, I'm Sean." "Hi..." "Hi, your?" He looked at Dee. "DeeDee." I butted in, "I'm Shannon."
"Shannon, DeeDee...so you drove 3 hours from?" I said, "above Waco." (I LIED TO SEAN ASTIN..EEK It's about 2 hours) "Near Dallas?" I answered, "Sorta..." He continued, "I can't believe you drove that long to see me. What are you doing?" He looked at Dee hunched over her Tolken homework. She answered, "I'm doing homework. Tolken homework actually." "Here let me see that." He took the sheet from Dee. He read out the first question. "Limbas bread...the nature of limbas? Hmmm..." The cameraman walked up with his tiny digital camera. They both pondered over the questions. The other man asked,"What is this for?" Dee said, "Tolken Class...well Oxford Classics. So hmmm.. What is your authoritative opinion?"
Sean read the second question. They talked about the questions and what could be the answer.
A bit later, I asked, "Can you sign this?" I handed over the page from the calendar.
"Wait, can I take a picture with you?" said Sean.
We got up and gave the man our cameras while posing on each side of Sean. We took about six pictures--2 each camera, his and ours. As Sean put his arms around us he asked, "Can we put this up on the website?" We were like,"UHHH YEAH!" He said, "Thanks!" and smiled. I was so nervous that I kept shifting my weight on each foot.
The other guy joked about too much head in the pictures. Then he asked our names again for the camera. Then we gave Sean the calendar pages to sign. I said, as he signed mine on the ledge nearby, "We saw your film." He said,"where?" We said on the sundance site. He said, "Shhh...don't tell people it's on there." Then I said, "I see that you are having a question and answer time. Here's the question that I would ask you...'What did you learn from Pauly Shore as you filmed 'Encino Man'?" He looked at me while he laughed, "Is that really gonna be your question?" I said no. He said good because it would take him awhile to come up with an answer for that. When he handed me back the calendar pic, I told him that I would put it next to my signed postcard of Viggo's. She said that he signs "the road goes ever on..." all the time and he needs to get a new quote, a Sam quote. He looked at Dee's page and said, "We are looking at the Eliphaunts in this." Dee mentions the quote about people will never believe this back home. He signs it using that quote.
Then he asked us where we are from again and what we are in school for. I said that I was in Seminary, and he asked me what denomination. I said Baptist, but studying world missions--that I want to be an art teacher and missionary. He smiles and nods his head. I say that's what I will be doing this summer. Then I made the mistake of saying, "And Dee wants to be just an English teacher."
Sean says, "I agreed with everything you just said up to that part about 'just.' I was an English and History major at UCLA." I was so embarrassed about the slip!
Dee said that both her parents were English teachers. Sean said that there would be more money for teachers if he was king. We laughed. They started discussing Jane Austen. He went to Jane Austen's house in Bath. Dee loves Jane Austen and said that she wished she could go. He said she could. She said no she couldn't because she's a poor student. He assured her someday she could.
After a little more conversation, I looked at him and said, "Thank you for your time!"
He said, "NO, thank you. I am amazed at how people come out. Where did you hear about this?" We told him TOR.N. We thanked him again. He thanked us. Then he walked over to another couple of girls while we sat there listening and beaming.
A little later, he was talking about majors, looked over at Dee and said, "Dee is an English major." Then he talked about Galveston (one girl was from there) because that's one of the reasons he came there--to announce he's making a movie about the huge storm in the early 1900's. When he took pics with those girls, he said that they were the first to ask him for pics that day cause we were asked by him to take pics. EEEE!

We moved away from the crowd forming around him. We had our special time with him. The promoter thanked us for being considerate.

We met this awesome guy named Adam who sat with us on the center front row. I made sure that we were first in line. I was not rude but people don't call me "line nazi" for nothing. It was sooo cool to see Sean watch himself on the big screen. As they showed his movie, "the long and short of it," he sat cross-legged on the floor.
During question and answer time, I got up and was third for questions. I said, "Hi." He smiled and said, "hi." I asked what his favorite tig rule was. People around me laughed and said that was a great question. I was proud. He looked around and said that he liked tig but enjoyed cup more.

At the end he promised to come back to Texas and said in a genuine Sam voice, "I'm going to come back! That's a promise, and you know how I am about promises, Mr. Frodo!" EEEEE!!! Everyone cheered. It was so great!