Ambushed!

Welcome back to my continuing saga! Parts one and two are already up, and this is part three!

Where were we this time? Right.

Vancouver. Megs. The sound stage with the giant green screen and jail set. Working as a PA.

Thursday was our last day of shooting before a long weekend, and it would still be a while before I solved the mystery of how Ben Affleck had known my best friend's name. My spring break was almost over, and my dad was getting the rare opportunity to come home for the weekend by flying home with me. We had tickets booked for a 9pm flight, and my dad had made arrangements to leave by 6pm to get to the airport.

That morning, I’d rushed to get ready. I’d thrown on jeans and a hoodie with the logo of my high school’s softball team. It was about 10am, and my hair was messy from wearing an earpiece for the walkie talkie. I was rushing from one side of the stage to another to do some random errand that some random person had instructed me to do (can you say lowest on the totem pole?), when Ben Affleck appeared out of nowhere with the set photographer.

“Can we take a couple photos?” he asked me.

I think my thoughts were something like this: SERIOUSLY??? OMG OMG YES! OMG OMG OMG OMG! OMG! YES! DUH! OMG! Hell, they’d probably still be like that if this happened tomorrow.

I managed to respond with a squeaky “Yeah, sure,” and I barely had time to rip the earpiece off before he was hugging me. And God bless that set photographer, he just kept taking photos until he had gone through an entire roll. Ben Affleck hugged me, kissed my forehead, laughing the whole time.

"We’ll pick some good ones and print them for you, ok?” And then, just as quickly, they were gone.

Reflecting on it now – when I’m the age he would have been and my sister is the age I was – it was a really nice thing he did. He could have taken a quick snapshot, not caring how it came out, but instead he took a few minutes to make my entire year. I have a lot of respect for people who take a little extra time when they know it means something to someone.

The entire exchange was maybe 2-3 minutes, but oh man, I will never forget it.

And then the day got better.

We were breaking for lunch and John had just broken the news to my dad that we wouldn’t, in fact, be able to leave at 6pm for our 9pm flight. They’d missed a shot and would not be wrapping early that night, so we had to figure out alternate plans to get back to LA. The upside? We were sitting with Ben Affleck’s assistant at the time, and she had good news.

“We’re flying to LA tonight – Warren Beatty sent a jet for us, and I can see if there’s room for you guys.”

Yeah, ok, because that happens. Seriously? I was in a complete state of shock by that point - was this really happening to me???

Parts one, two and four!