Mom's coming to my Lebo book signing!

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I have disappointing news for anyone planning on attending my 7 p.m. book signing tomorrow at the Mt. Lebanon Public Library. My 80-year-old mother will be attending and you all know what that means.

No profanity. No nudity.

Of course, I can’t speak for Mom. She’s always been a bit of a free spirit.

Giving a presentation or something that aims at being humorous in front of your parents is a real challenge.

And humor, indeed, is my aim.

I can’t do drama or profound revelation. No one’s going to show up to watch me try and solve even a basic math equation, something that would only be funny to the mean-spirited and just plain pathetic to everyone else.

These are called book signings, but that seems awfully presumptuous to me. 

First off, that assumes anyone else is going to show up. It might just wind up being me and Mom with her going through her hamper-sized purse and every four minutes asking me if I’d like a stick of gum.

Second, calling it a book signing hints that books will be sold. There’s no guarantee of that, either.

Maybe no one will be in a buying mood. Or maybe I’ll be so charmed by the welcome I’ll spontaneously decide to give my entire stock away. The gesture would in equal measures delight my Mom while infuriating my wife.

Either way I try and keep expectations down in the basement, which is coincidentally where I’m scheduled to speak so soaring eloquence tomorrow might not make a difference.

One of these days I’m going to start off by walking directly to the podium and going straight into a reading. No howdies. No introductory gab.

None of the great rock band comes out and and spends about four of five minutes giving some idle chat about who they are and what they’ve been up to. No, they blast right into a real rocker to seize on the throng’s enthusiasm.

This might be difficult for me to do. I’m likely to be engaged in idle chat with everyone that walks through the door. I’m guessing I’ll already be friendly with many of the people so pulling off the enigmatic and reclusive author bit will be a toughie

But it would be cool if I just burst through the doors, stomped to the podium and just launched into one of my stories. It would be even more cool if some flash pots ignited as the crowd went into a frenzy. But it’s hard to whip a crowd of probably about 15 or so into any kind of a frenzy and, guaranteed, the librarians would be furious if I set off about 50-pounds of pyro in Meeting Room A.

One of my best openings ever -- and I hope to do it again one day -- was from when I taught creative non-fiction at Point Park University. The 13-week classes were each three hours long.

First, I’d be deliberately 10 minutes late. The grad students were all furious, wondering if I was either incompetent or just rude.

I’d finally storm into the room, throw my black duster trench coat in the corner and take out one page of notes.

Then I’d begin to read, if that’s what you could call it. I stared at the paper and paused for about three seconds between each introductory word. I was trying to channel the nervous tension of Don Knotts making the speech from “The Ghost and Mr. Chicken.”

“When . . . I . . . heard . . . I’d . . . be . . . required . . . to . . . speak . . . for . . . three . . . full . . . hours  . . . I . . . figured . . .  the . . . only . . . way  . . . I  . . . could  . . . fulfill . . . the . . . duty . . . is  . . . if  . . . I . . . put . . . really . . . really . . . really . . . long . . . pauses . . . between . . . each . . . of . . . the . . . words.”

By the time I got to the second “really,” they’d all gotten the joke. They knew this was going to be fun. I’d so lowered expectations at the very first impression that classes were a breeze.

Of course, I couldn’t never pull that off with Mom in the audience.

She’d start to heckle, “You’re talking too slow! Speak up! Get to the point!”

I’d have to stop the whole silly production to tell her to pipe down and just keep her pants on.

And I’ll mean it.

I’m serious about that “no nudity” pledge.

Related . . .

Rodell returning to Lebo for book signing

My fears of public speaking

“Use All The Crayons!” a 10-star review

Rodell returning to Lebo for book signing

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I’ve accepted an invitation to speak March 13 at one of western Pennsylvania’s most prestigious libraries.

For those of you unfamiliar with the art of self-promotion, let me explain.

First, I called this prestigious library, introduced myself, and told the lady about “Use All The Crayons!” my self-published book that as of right now is trailing Adolph Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” by just 1,498,637 sales points on Amazon.com!

I don’t know what I was expecting her to say, but here’s what she said: “No one here’s ever heard of you or your book.”

I’ll bet Hitler never had this problem.

I began to prattle on for so long that she said either out of pity or a desire to avoid starving to death while listening to my pathetic pleadings, sure, you can visit.

Yes!

“Oh,” she said, “is there anything else you can tell me about yourself that might help with promotion?”

Well, I’m grew up in Mt. Lebanon.

“You did!” exclaimed the events coordinator for Mt. Lebanon Public Library. “Why didn’t you say so?”

Why, indeed.

This might surprise people who live in Mt. Lebanon, but many of us who grew up in Mt. Lebanon and moved away from Mt. Lebanon have difficulty admitting we’ve ever even spent a night sightseeing in Mt. Lebanon.

This is because Mt. Lebanon is one of the wealthiest communities in western Pennsylvania. It has magnificent schools, enormous homes, great shopping and dining and for about eight years in the ‘90s many people could brag we were neighbors with Mario Lemieux.

How exclusive is it?

I remember seeing only four black students during my high school years -- and two of them were twins.

Admitting you’re from Mt. Lebanon is like admitting you’ve vacationed at someplace like the fabulous Breakers in Palm Beach, Florida, where, in fact, my family and I will be vacationing in about two weeks.

Yes, if you’re running short on envious resentments, please be sure to check out my blog the next two weeks because I have a bunch of outlandish fun lined up.

Admitting you’ve grown up in Mt. Lebanon makes people think of that great old line about those who were born on third base and grew up thinking they hit a triple.

I wasn’t born on third base. I was born in Greentree on Aiken Ave. My late father make the precarious decision to move his family to Mt. Lebanon when I was 6.

“”I wanted to make sure you kids had a great education and that’s why we moved to Mt. Lebanon.”

It was a real shame because you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t teach it algebra.

I was a terribly disruptive student. I played hookie, instigated food fights and may have been among the last Mt. Lebo students to ever receive corporal punishments for being a recidivist class clown. 

It would make a great story if I could say one of the junior high paddlings was administered along with the warning, “Keep acting like this, kid, and one day you’re going to wind up living someplace like Latrobe!”

But that didn’t happen.

I didn’t grow up feeling at all privileged because we were not at all privileged.

We lived in a very modest part of Mt. Lebanon. Getting by was always a struggle. My father was a humble optician, the guy paid meager amounts to keep your glasses from sliding down your nose.

But growing up there was fantastic. I had a wonderful childhood. So many great friends and memories.

I don’t remember ever once thinking, wow, that guy drives a nice car. I want to hang out with him!

Or, gadzooks, that girl has a really swell house. I’d like to date her!

I didn’t care about the size of her house. I was far more interested in the swell of her sweater.

I wonder if I’d have been as happy if I’d have grown up someplace less affluent.

And that’s where I fault my father.

Happiness is less about situation than it is about contrast. The old man should have let us slum it for a few years before moving us to Lebo.

Then we could have appreciated just how good we had it.

So I hope everyone in Mt. Lebanon turns out on March 13 at 7 p.m. to say hello.

I need lots of people there so that one day my happy little book will outsell an 87-year-old hate-filled manifesto written by one of history’s worst monsters.

That is mein kampf.

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