found drama

A crowded bookstore. There are several simultaneous talks/book-signings going on here. All around the perimeter of this (oddly shaped) bookstore, you see tables and lecterns. Piles of books. Folding chairs. People (mostly middle-aged women) sitting in the folding chairs, or else standing. You’re searching for the table that has lured you here. (And you fumble around in your pocket, noticing that you phone is missing.) Finally you see him: Nassim Nicholas Taleb. He paces back and forth behind the table; he grabs a glass of water from the lectern as he passes, sipping and then putting it back down as he passes the lectern again. He is smiling and making small talk with the women in the very front row of chairs. (The chairs in front of his table only go back three rows.) (You fumble around in your pocket again. Your phone is definitely missing.) You try to find a chair to sit in, and though the bookstore is crowded, there are still plenty of empty chairs here. But you cannot bring yourself to sit down in one. You wonder: how am I going to be able to call a cab without my phone? And somehow you know that someone here in the bookstore mistakenly (or maliciously?) holds your phone. You wonder: If I could just call it and here it ring… You wonder: would Taleb accuse me of being fragile if he knew I was thinking this?

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