Have you ever felt alone in a crowded room?
Written by Annie on August 25th, 2008I have, most recently at the Chicago Board of Trade.
It was on a recent weekend visit to Chicago (right after my trip to Yellowstone). My first time there, I thought I’d go check out the Chicago Board of Trade, or CBOT, where agricultural commodities are traded everyday. As a child, I had watched my dad trade these. I didn’t understand what futures were or how they worked, but I understood he was losing money. Childhood memories really stick with you, eh.
According to the CBOT website, the general public isn’t allowed into the viewing galleries to the trading floor. So I was only prepared for the visitor’s center, which had a few neat items and old pictures for show. But we came across a nice old man with membership there and he let us in (to the disapproval of the viewing gallery floor secretary) to the viewing galleries. I was extremely excited to see the trading floor, and see with my own eyes all the fascinating hand signals (practically a sign language!) that they use to communicate. It’s almost like how you see it on popular culture, for example this year’s comedy “What Happens in Vegas.”
Here’s the embarrassing part. Everybody that was in the viewing gallery was wearing formal clothing. All the men were wearing suits. The two women both had a skirt, a blouse, and a blazer. My friend that was with me at least wore business casual pants and a plain t-shirt. I dressed like a tourist and wore short shorts and flip flops.
I never felt so under dressed in my life.
My name is Annie, and I'm a high school student from Canada. This blog, well, it really isn't much. Just a few ramblings, ideas, thoughts...
25
PM
Wow shorts and flip flops in a crowd of rich business folks? Ouch.
This reminds me of that Gilmore Girls episode, where the mom is wearing daisy dukes to her daughter’s first day at the private school! LOL. That was a funny episode.
I like that quote, have you ever felt alone in a crowded room. I’ve heard it before, but I’m not sure where?
Here’s my story. I heard that there was going to be a town beauty pageant and I decided to go with my neighbor. Now at the time I lived in this practically 90% Russian town, half of it was in Russian, the other half was in bad English. Buying food from the vendors, mostly non-english speaking senior volunteers, I had to point at what I wanted and they needed to use fingers to express how much it cost. It wasn’t the greatest experience.
25
PM
Oh and I forgot to mention, I don’t know Russian.
28
PM
Hi Trishana. I don’t know who came up with “Have you ever been alone in a crowded room,” I only know the phrase because I’ve heard it in quite a few songs.
I can certainly relate to your Russian beauty pageant story. I live in an Italian neighborhood, so a lot of neighborhood events, like fares, fundraisers, etc. are held in Italian. When I first went to one of these events, an outdoor fare I believe, I felt very ‘alone’ despite the fact that there were hundreds of people around me. Not only were they all Italian, they were mostly 50+.