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Trip to Rubber Stamp Expo proves to be a learning experience

By Michael Tsai
Advertiser Staff Writer

It's important that I remind myself — often — how much my girlfriend has endured in the name of togetherness.

She has trudged behind me on joyless hikes across steep, sunburnt ridges. She has pinched herself purple trying to stay awake at all the literary readings I've dragged her to. And she has sat at my side nodding patiently while I've drunkenly condemned, for the hundredth time, Magic Johnson's damnable game-winning jump hook in Game 5 of the 1987 NBA Championships.

She has paid her relationship dues a thousand times over. So how could I possibly begrudge one lousy trip with her to the latest Rubber Stamp Expo?

Ever been to one of these things? Bunch of vendors hawking rubber stamps and stencils? Bunch of women with discerning "stamper" eyes carefully evaluating imprint quality and clarity of detail? Bunch of guys wondering where the heck the hotdog stand is?

To be fair, a stamping expo isn't painful for guys the same way a Marie Claire relationship quiz or a Karen Black marathon on Oxygen might be. It's different. More insidious. Sort of like that fog that kept messing up Chief Broom's head in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest."

In fact, these expos are so terribly pleasant, so disarmingly benign, that you'd have to be Satan incarnate to work up an active dislike for one. It's like hating teddy bears or unicorns or fuzzy-wuzzy kittens wrapped up in balls of yarn — all of which, by the way, are usually available for purchase in the form of rubber stamps.

I spent the first half hour or so casually browsing with my dearest, trying to demonstrate all of my fine significant-other qualities — interest, engagement, enthusiasm. She wasn't buying it. Somewhere near the "Eyelets Sale!" sign, she ditched me.

As I wandered alone through a labyrinth of foldable boxes, Spritz Glitz and washi paper, I counted five other guys in similar straits. We passed each other without making eye contact, part of an unspoken "I don't see you, you don't see me" pact of honor.

One guy stood near the door staring at the illuminated exit sign. I saw his mouth moving. He was counting the little bulbs.

Nearby, an older guy had commandeered an abandoned table and had set up camp with a bag of Cheetos, a Coke and the morning paper. Beneath the table he had shed his sandals and was wiggling his bare toes in the air-conditioning current. A stamp-expo veteran, no doubt. I made a mental note to nominate him for chief if it ever came to an election.

After two or three laps around the room, I planted myself next to a pillar near the exit, feeling not so much impatient as woozy. Everything had become a blur of angel wings and maneki-nekos and ice-cream cones. I was OD'ing on cute.

My girlfriend came to retrieve me a while later, her eyes alight with suppressed laughter. "You look pathetic," she said.

Perhaps. But there were lessons learned that day, knowledge gained.

"Did you know," I said proudly, "that there are 65 bulbs in that exit sign?"