Brush with fame

Sometimes I think my son is more closely related to my sister than to me.

Many years ago, while at the State Fair, my sister was approached by then-Governor Rudy Perpich, who asked if she'd like to have her picture taken with him. Lisa, not recognizing him, looked at him oddly and responded, "Why?"

AJ may have just topped her.

We were at the mall Friday, finally getting Sydney's 3-year pictures taken. We'd seen an ad in the paper that Minnesota Wild player Cal Clutterbuck was going to be signing autographs at the AT&T store at about the same time. We figured AJ would get a kick out of meeting him, so when we finished with Sydney's photo session, we headed over there.

AJ approached the table and immediately his eyes were drawn to the souvenir hockey masks, which the hockey player signed for him. One of the store employees then asked AJ, "Would you like to have your picture taken with him?"

To which, AJ responded, "Not really."

As you can see, he posed anyway. When we got home, I googled Cal Clutterbuck's name, and so was able to show AJ some photos of him playing hockey. Now AJ thinks it's pretty cool that he met him.

Of course we then had to head downstairs to play hockey. When you have a cool new mask, what else could you possibly want to do?

As a marketer, I have to say that whoever organized today's autograph session ought to be fired. This was supposed to be a great publicity moment for AT&T, not to mention the Minnesota Wild. Page back up and look at the souvenir photo. Do you see anything that says AT&T or Minnesota Wild? Why wouldn't you have the player in a jersey? And why wouldn't you have a nice banner in the background? No wonder AJ didn't recognize the significance of the guy.