My Encounter With Stephen King

You can sense my wife’s envy…

Like most of the rest of the human population of Planet Earth, I’ve read books written by Stephen King. Not all, but quite a few. My personal favorite was The Stand, although under the influence of mild mood swings I could probably point to half a dozen others and say they’re my favorites. But did I ever expect to actually meet him, even though we live here in Sarasota, less than three miles as the crow flies from his house on Casey Key? Well, nope. Sure didn’t. But I did.

Of course, things like this usually happen in the most unlikely places. Here I was bumbling around in our local grocery store, gathering up a few things my wife sent me to retrieve, when I spied this gent over at the meat counter. He was wearing glasses and was dressed in rather baggy jeans, a T-shirt that had “Bangor Maine” on it, and a ball cap. I didn’t think much about it, but as I wandered over to the dairy section, I kept thinking, “Gee, that guy looks really familiar.”

As he passed by, heading toward the produce section, I took another gander. I knew I’d seen that face before. My spidey-sense was tingling.

Whipping out my iPhone, I searched for recent images of Stephen King. You have to keep in mind that the last photo I’d seen of him was probably on the back jacket of one of the hardcovers of his that I bought twenty years ago, and I was thrown off a bit because he was tall, a lot taller than I would have expected, and pretty thin, too (hopefully not the work of an angry gypsy).

The pictures didn’t exactly clinch it, but they were close enough that I figured, what the heck. The worst that could happen would be he wouldn’t be who I thought he was. So, as he was loading his stuff onto the belt in the checkout line, I leaned in and said, “Excuse me, sir, but you look a heck of a lot like Stephen King.”

He looked up at me and smiled. “Well, that’s because I am Stephen King.” I put out my paw, he shook it, and I let him get back to his life.

Did I tell him who I was, or ask for a photo with him? Nope. While I’m sure he probably would have made pleasant noises regarding the former and happily agreed to the latter, I didn’t want to intrude on him any more than absolutely necessary. It was enough to see him in the flesh and shake his hand.

So, what’s your favorite celebrity encounter story?