Through the Looking Glass

Human Trafficking

tables_settingup Yesterday to some extent was the pre-game show for today’s beginning of the conference.  I got up at 5:30, blogged, ran out and got breakfast and then played a very small amount of Injustice on the PS4 while my wife got up and around and ready.  Once we left the house we had a whole list of things that needed to be done before the people started arriving.  The first thing was to swing by the hotel and make sure that they were ready to start receiving people and that the room we had rented as a social room was set up.  There were 15 tables that we would need to find table cloths for.  They of course had table cloths that they were willing to rent us…  but at $7 a table for a conference that already runs entirely on donations…  that was pushing it a little much.

After this we ran by the High School to make sure that everything was set up there.  The conference room we spent Saturday setting up, had gotten completely torn down Monday because of a meeting that was not on any of the publically available calendars.  They made promises to set the room back up after they were finished, but when we arrived yesterday morning it was only a few rows away from being done, so instead of hoping and praying that it was finished… we opted to roll up our sleeves and finish the job.  I figured a few minutes worth of work was well worth the piece of mind knowing it was completely finished.  From here I dropped my wife off at Staples and ran across the street to Dollar Tree, where I went table cloth shopping.

They did not of course have round table cloths, by my wife had the idea to simply lay one over the center of the table and another one over the center in the opposite direction.  She did the math and thought it would worth out perfectly, and sure enough in practice it did work great.  I opted to pick up a bunch of different colors, the idea being that this was a mixer and it would be easier to remember what table you were at if folks were up roaming about if you could remember “the blue one in the back”.  I started setting up the tables after our first run to the airport of the day, and had gotten a few done when the cavalry arrived.  Being the math teachers that they are… they figured out a scheme so that no two colors touched and finished the job for me as I headed back to the airport for round two.

Towards the end of the day we joked that I could add human trafficking to my resume, because surely someone there was starting to get suspicious since the same person kept showing up and collecting more new arrivals.  Over the course of the day I ran three loads to the hotel from the airport, and another load from the main hotel to the overflow location.  For the bulk of the day my wife was there at the airport playing welcoming committee as folks arrived, and making sure they had either a rental car or a ride with someone else.  It is really damned good that she was doing this, because as the day went on a number of plans fell through.  While we thought we would be hauling a single passenger on the final leg of the trip, we ended up with a full load of five in the car.  For the most part everyone was extremely appreciative of the impromptu shuttle service.

Through the Looking Glass

I still believe that at some point my wife was abducted and replaced by a doppelganger.  I guess this is fine since the one she was replaced from seems to be absolutely bubbling over with excitement and enthusiasm.  There were several points during the day where I thought to myself…  who is this woman beside me that is visibly bouncing at the thought of meeting new people.  My wife and I are both introverts, and for the most part home bodies.  However in our own little online circles we are the social glue that often times holds groups of people together, and play the role of welcoming new people into the fold.  So at some point it dawned on me… that she had become the visual embodiment of her online personality, much in the same way as I guess I would were I around a bunch of my twitter friends.

That is the part that has been the strangest for me.  I often talk about the Twittersphere and Blogosphere like it is some sort of monoculture, but in reality I am only ever referring to a very small slice of the community as a whole.  So this week as I am watching all these twitter folk interact, it feels absolutely foreign to me… because there is absolutely zero overlap with my own community.  It just feels strange that there could exist two completely different countries inside of the same online service.  This country is solely based on a love of Mathematics education, and looking for ways to better themselves and their classrooms.  I mean there is a reason why my wife and I do not follow each other on twitter, because our twitter timelines are completely packed with a specific kind of information about our passions.  It is absolute irony that I would end up married to a Mathematics teacher, considering throughout school that was the only subject I did not effortlessly excel at.  I guess in the best relationships we look for people with the qualities we ourselves lack.

Growing up I spent a lot of time with my father at weddings.  He we a professional photographer on the side, and from the moment I showed any sign of aptitude with a camera I got drafted into a life as a photographers assistant.  I always struggled with being in weddings, because as the wedding photographer you are adopted into whatever family unit exists for that day.  You become a crucial and vital member of the wedding party, and have to learn the ins and outs and how to get the pictures you are paid to take while everyone there wants to simply hang out and converse.  You are brought into the vortex of this deeply personal moment in someone’s life, but at the same time you have absolutely no meaningful connection to it.  This to me has been Twitter Math Camp.  These teachers all know each other in deeply personal ways after years of interaction on twitter, and I feel like I am just a passing interloper peering in on the proceedings.

That is not to say that I don’t already know several of them, or at least know OF them from conversations my wife has regarding her math circles.  I am sure by the end of the conference I will know several more considering I am acting in the role as tech support monkey.  Given that this a twitter group, I suggested that folks just tweet me when they have issues.  So I expect I will see a bunch of new faces showing up in my feed.  I am trying really hard to be cordial and outgoing and meet the onslaught of new people with a smile.  This conference has just ballooned since its start in 2012.  I have no clue what the numbers for Philadelphia were like, but the first conference in St. Louis was around 30-40 people.  This year we set up 180 chairs in the conference room and we might have people standing in the back of the room as it feels like we are probably going to end up with considerably more than that.

Board games a Plenty

tableofgames I feel like this is a group I could get along with just fine, were it not for the fact that there were so many of them.  By the time we made the third run to the airport, there were enough people in the hospitality suite that my fight or flight instincts were starting to kick in.  I have this thing, that has been passed down through the generations from my grandfather, to my father, and now the older I get the worse it is getting in me.  I do not handle crowds at all.  Like I can handle twenty or so people in a really open area, but the more tightly packed the people get… the more on edge I get waiting anxiously for my opportunity to bolt and get free from the pack.  In my father it has gotten so bad that he cannot stand to be in a store for any length of time.  I luckily have not gotten to that point, but I definitely have issues… especially with a tightly packed conference room or elevator.

Last night I was having a battle with myself.  I wanted to stick around and play board games and possibly even Magic the Gathering.  However two things were at work here.  Firstly being cordial and friendly in person has a severe toll on me.  I had reached my saturation point for humanity and I just needed to get away.  I could have handled a small group of twenty or so playing board games, but based on the pictures I saw posted in twitter later in the night… the room was apparently packed with people and a huge success.  So no only was my buffer full, but had I gone back to the hospitality suite I would have definitely struggled with the whole fight or flight instinct thing.

I always feel horrible when my antisocial tendencies keep me from having fun.  Like I don’t want to be known as that malfunctioning person that is never part of anything fun or entertaining.  I didn’t want to seem rude or standoffish to all of these guests… which I at least feel partly responsible for since my wife and I are representatives of the host city as it were.  Unfortunately there are just some things that no matter how much I will it… I simply cannot push past psychologically.  As a result I am sure I missed out on a really fun time, but instead I had the needed time to recharge my batteries and prepare for what is more than likely going to be an extremely frenetic and stressful first day.  Wish me luck!