Unasked-For Anecdote: A Famous Person I Acted Like an Idiot About

A few years ago I went out on a date with a C-list actor (or, like, D- or G-list — are you impressed?) who took me to a screening of a WWII documentary he was involved with. He was very nice, it was a good documentary, and we went out to breakfast afterward (the screening was early), where he talked about the making of the documentary and about all these WWII things. I tuned most of it out, though, because I was extremely nervous, and also because I had just gotten a mosquito bite on my cheek and was focused on staying turned slightly to the left, and on seeming cool and normal and not a moron loser that a famous person would hate.

Anyway, he was describing the Japanese army, and kept talking about the “bonsai” fighters, at which point inwardly I was like, Ohhh wait, you’re actually really dumb, you don’t know what “bonsai” means, and it was this amusing revelation that famous people can actually be stupid. (IMPOSSIBLE!) And then the date ended — nothing happened afterward because he was definitely Not That Into Me. But the point of all this is that I went around for the next couple years telling people how Mr. C-List Actor is stupid because he got the kamikaze pilots mixed up with the miniature trees. But then I learned about the banzai charge — a last-ditch, almost certain suicide “human wave” attempt the Japanese soldiers made to overwhelm their better-prepared opponents — and I was like, Oh, I am an idiot and an asshole.

NB: Friends of mine who know who the actor in question is because I wouldn’t STFU about it at the time (“OMG, what am I going to wear to the Oscars,” etc.) are kindly requested not to mention him by name.