Anaheim Comic Con - Day 01: 19 Names, All In a Row

The first day of four days of volunteering at the Anaheim Comic Con! Boo-Ya!

I drove to the Anaheim Convention Center only to find that there was no volunteer parking, or discounted, or anything that would save me from breaking my projected Comic Con budget of $0.00. I grimaced and paid the ten bucks that I hadn’t wanted to fork over. I guess its just life in the big city. Or at least in AnaCrime.

I slowly made my way to Con, trying to figure out where the Coffee Convention ended and the Comic Con began. Apparently Hall D was the place to be. Which was a longer walk than I had anticipated, but walking long distances was something that I knew that I would need to get accustomed to ASAP. I idly wondered how many miles I would clock in at by Day 04.
I made it to the Con to find it still being in the process of being assembled. My contact was a fellow named Spat, and I was told that I would know who he was by the crowd of people following in his wake. This description came to be true, as I found Spat on his entourage of volunteers near the back of the Hall.

The crew was nearly up to a little over a dozen by the time I arrived, and Spat started off by walking us around the Convention Center. I greeted a few of the volunteers and we chatted a little as we walked. We even picked up a few more volunteers as we ambled along. I forgot all their names very quickly, because I am awful at names, and feel just as guilty about that as I am bad at remembering.

As luck would have it, I stumbled upon an exercise that would alleviate that problem.
One of the duties of the Pre-Show Thursday was the stuffing of the coveted free SWAG Bag. (S.W.A.G. = Stuff We All Get) This consisted of a plastic bag with one copy each of the magazines Wizard, ToyFare, and FunFare. We would follow this up with a little card advertisement of Geek’d, and a starter card pack of Magic: Planeswalker. To do this, we got into an Assembly Line of one person passing out each of the ingredients of the SWAG Bag. So that would be 5 or 6 people on the line, with the rest grabbing bags and filling them up. At first we did this in silence, just getting through it all.

Then I started introducing myself.

This was to each person that I gave a magazine. But the key was that I kept introducing myself to each person over and over. And asking for their name in return. At first it was dumb, but it soon became apparent that it was helping me out. A LOT. I must have said each person’s name 50 times. And I found myself just goofing around with them as we worked.
And now I remember each and every person by their name:

Andre
Katie
Carissa
Darryl
Jon
Michael
Joel
Christine
Roy
Alex
Romiro
Shawn
Rob
Alan
Jimmy
Trini
Wilsa
Joey
Connie

As for spelling of said names, I’m not sure. I didn’t ask them all to spell, because that’s just insane. I’m just happy I could remember their names. It was a personal achievement.

Topics of Conversation @ The Con: TheYellow Ranger, comics to start on, name combinations, hand hugs, being so tired I have to sing, saying someone’s name a ridiculous amount of times, the all-time high of 11 bags, Juliet Landeau being sick, etc.

-Nate