ANA Chicago Show...next week!

"Can you validate my parking?"

This is Mary Elise reporting live…from my home office where I’m resting my sore feet…after day two at the World's Fair of Money.

Parking validation was among a number of questions I fielded today at the ANA Show in Chicago, during my glamorous volunteer work as…an Ambassador. The title sounded distinguished on paper, which I’m sure it could be in perhaps executive and political situations…but not in this case.

Have you ever watched original episodes of Star Trek? If so, you’re familiar with the “Red Shirts.” There was a Red Shirt on every mission…and you knew the poor sap was going to bite it before the episode was over. Being an ANA Ambassador wasn’t quite that dramatic or dangerous…but passersby fondly referred to me as one of the “Blue Shirts.”

Blue-shirted Ambassadors (and the shirts were actually teal, thank you very much) were strategically placed in areas such as Registration, to help attendees get the information they needed, and to help them get wherever they needed to go. Today I was located at the second-level intersection of three indoor walkways that connected hotels, a parking garage, and the convention center. Anyone using the walkways had to pass by me. Since there was only one ANA poster in my area, that was a good thing!

I “directed traffic” as other another passerby jovially put it. Just like the parking validation comment, it was all in good fun. After all, there I was, standing alone in a walkway, talking to and sometimes startling every stranger in sight. I felt kind of like a street vendor. But everyone really appreciated the help! They thanked me for being there, obviously joked with me, and told me at least four times that someone should’ve brought me a chair. One kind person even brought me a gourmet cookie from the DoubleTree…yum!

I was grateful as well for the passersby… and not just because it was my job to help them, though that would be the noble thing to say. Honestly, I had forgotten my Wi-Fi device at home. Unable to be my usual constantly plugged-in Internet junkie, I was forced to resort to photographing planes coming in for a landing at nearby O’Hare airport, and watching the world’s largest and ugliest wasp fly around, thankfully on the outside of the glass windowed hallway. All in my downtime, of course.

I got to hear German, Russian, and a few other languages I couldn’t identify. I also heard some foul words from a gentleman who didn’t know there was a shuttle bus until he’d already made the long walk to the show…but he was grateful for my directions! I even got to help a partially blind lady get safely to the escalator (though I will never figure out exactly what a blind person was doing at a coin show). And I was able to entertain passersby with my upbeat directions, complete with Vanna White hand gestures.

The last two days just go to show…there’s a lot more to making a successful numismatic event than meets the eye!

Finally, Thursday will be coin day, my C4OA friends! I will be free from volunteering tomorrow, and I’ll be venturing onto the show floor…God help me.