brushes with fame

Giant Patterson reunion post is coming as soon as I get all the pictures loaded onto Flickr


So I know I've mentioned before about Ben Wildman-Tobriner, the Olympic swimmer I knew in high school. I think he's on tonight in the heats for the 50m freestyle. But lo and behold, my vague suspicions about ANOTHER Olympic athlete, this one much more famous, that I used to know, were confirmed last night...

The summer after sixth grade I went to sleepaway volleyball camp at Stanford for a week. It was horrible- I'd never been to sleepaway camp before, I was in the midst of my "ANYTHING STANFORD IS EVIL" phase, and basically by the end of the 2nd day I was so homesick that I had to go home and be a day camper along with my friend Sarah Eisenhardt. So I have some pretty clear memories from this traumatic time, and one of them is that one of our coaches was named Kerri Walsh. As in, Kerri Walsh the amazing gold medalist beach volleyball player.

I remember her teaching us how to spike and backset, but more than that I remember that she was firm but really nice to me when I was so homesick and sad I couldn't even play volleyball. So hurray for athletes being awesome both on and off the court!

Thus concludes my current brush with fame.