In a store in Kona last week I looked up and walking toward me was none other than Matthew McConaughey. Shock.
There he was looking just like himself, in a sweatshirt looking calm and casual. I was so nervous seeing this fantastic actor, celebrity and personal hero. My throat tightened up, in a blur I reached out to shake hands. He smiled and shook my hand. I felt like I was in a movie.
I bumbled out, “I watched you last night in the lawyer movie.” He said “thanks.” I saw him again by the counter, he said hello, smiling and friendly, and walked out the door. I just said, “wow”.
Then the ripple of regret started up, thinking how I’d acted like a stuttering fan, mumbling a few lame phrases that he’d heard a million times before. If only I could’ve told him what a great actor he is, how I’d watched him in movies for years and how he’d made me and world laugh and cry and go on wild adventures.
Like in that scene in Time To Kill, where he described to a jury the horrible things done to a little girl, how he kept everyone spellbound, then made them cry.
Or in Fool’s Gold where he was hunting for sunken treasure. He is diving on the bottom of the ocean and his dive boat sinks and falls right behind him. I howl with laughter every time.
And in the movie, Mud, he risks going to prison to save a boy’s life from a snakebite. He puts his life on the line for a dying boy, that wrings me out like a sponge.
So much I would have told him that day in Kona, even to tell him one heartfelt compliment. But I blew it, I mumbled and didn’t say a thing.
Meeting Matthew McConaughey was a huge deal but I have to laugh at the fact I was too nervous to say the right thing. I could have risen to the occasion and said something meaningful, but I choked.
But don’t we all. It’s one of the glitches in life that in a pinch we don’t say the right thing at the time. We could have said the perfect come back or witty remark but we stay silent and miss the chance to really put the guy down, or be the clever life of the party. We’re too foggy to say the right words.
In movies they always say the right thing because it’s in the script. Real life doesn’t have a script. We have to wing it and ad lib, we can’t do the scene over again.
I think I’ll make it a New Year’s Resolution. Instead of not saying anything I will say the classic witty remark, the perfect come back.
So looking back, I know what I’d say to Matthew McConaughey, “Aloha, and welcome to Kona!”
Dennis Gregory writes a bi-monthly column for West Hawaii Today and welcomes your comments at makewavess@yahoo.com