People Are So Annoying!

I love Encyclo-Media! Each fall, librarians, gifted teachers, technology geeks and counselors descend on the Cox Center in Oklahoma City for a conference. It's a crazy two days of meeting authors, connecting with friends, getting great ideas, hearing about new books, discovering fun internet toys, eating too much, picking up conference freebies, and staying up late. It's a blast and every year I learn more than I can ever use, get star-struck by a famous author (who turns out to be a lot like an ordinary person!), and return home with a list of even more books to read!

And I love the conference exhibits. The vendors give away all the pens and pencils and other stuff you are willing to carry, there's candy on almost every table and they hand out free popcorn!

But..... The title gave it away, didn't it. You are so smart (since you are reading this!).

People can be so very ANNOYING!

Oh. Not you, of course. Never you!

Because I'm sure that you would never answer your telephone during a conference of educators and proceed to talk on it during a speaker's presentation. A speaker who flew from Minnesota to be there. A speaker who flew all that way to talk to educators--educators who would never allow a student to talk on the phone in their own classroom.

And surely, you would not pull a wheeled bag around behind you from pillar to post, banging into shins, dragging it over toes. And of course, YOU would especially not drag around a crate on wheels and leave it in the middle of aisles and glare at individuals who might need to pass by.





And since you are reading this blog, you would never, ever, lean over a stranger's shoulder, grabbing handfuls of free ink pens or bags. How rude! And how greedy!

Being the terrific and considerate person that you are, I would find it very difficult to believe that you would go to a conference session, sit on the second row (in front of a hearing-impaired blogger) and proceed to talk out loud to your friend throughout the entire presentation. Especially if you are an educator who would not allow your students to talk during your class.

The conference area is sometimes very crowded. I know that it is tempting to grab every free poster, pen, bag, sticky note pad, pedometer and mint to haul back to school with you. I've been known to take too many freebies myself! But I'm sure that you would never, ever, lose control of a gi-normous bag of loot and smack people with the tubes of posters sticking out the top because you, dear reader, would make sure to clamp the bag firmly under your arm and arrange your burdens so that the poster tubes are in front of you and no one will be endangered! And you will be mindful of that giant bag!




Of course, you are aware of the unwritten 'stair' rule--stay to the right and don't take up the entire width of the staircase. Because you wouldn't want me to blog about the fact that you and a friend meandered down a staircase as you chatted, weaving this way and that, making it impossible for anyone to pass on the left. And you wouldn't want to torment a person who perhaps had partaken of too many cups of coffee and was in desperate need of the powder room. Or hinder a person who was on their way to a Mexican food place where there was sure to be a forty minute wait.

Some people are like that. I'm just sayin'.....