By Megan Cynaumon
Dear Avery,
Celebrities. Can’t live with them. Can’t live without them. But when you live in Southern California, they become apart of the culture. Having a celeb encounter is fun and usually comes with a good story. I thought I’d share a few of my stories just for fun.
One night your Mom, Uncle Drew, and I were visiting your Uncle Ryan while he was living in L.A. We had gone to see the first Harry Potter movie, so I was around 14 years old, and the movie got out around midnight and there was no one around. We were entering the parking lot and noticed a skinny kid with a curly afro. Uncle Drew noticed that was “Even Stevens” a Disney character on a show we watched together. Naturally, we were excited. He was waiting for a cab, and saw us. He asked me if I wanted to share his cab with him and go hang out. But, I was 14 and with my siblings, so I told him I couldn’t go with him. “Even Stevens” turned out to be the now very famous and popular Shia LaBeouf. (My now self is saying “WHY THE HECK DID YOU NOT GET INTO THAT CAR?) Now every time I watch him in a blockbuster movie, I wonder what would have happened. Ahhh, we will never know. 😉
How did he go from this (when I met him) to >>>>>>>>>>> This?!?!
Next up, a girl that used to be cute, but turned out to be a diva. In college, my friend asked me if I would want to volunteer to be a celebrity escort at the “Kids
Choice Awards”. There was no question. I was in. My friend was paired with Emma Roberts, and my other friend was paired up with Chris Rock. Who was my celebrity? A girl by the name of Hayden Panettiere. You know, the cute little girl from “Remember the Titans”? Yeah, no one in the volunteer group knew who she was. I did. And I was excited to meet her. That is, until I did meet her. She arrived with her family, her younger brother, a dad who could care less about this event, and a mother who was asking for alcohol in the middle of the day.
My job was to escort her down the red carpet and to her seat. Yeah… sounds easy. I made a comment to her as we were walking down a steep set of stairs to spark conversation. “Oh, cute shoes! Be careful walking down these stairs.” She smirked and said “thanks”. A whooping 2 minutes later, her publicist said that Hayden would like me NOT to speak to her. And was mad that she was stuck sitting in the middle of kids. Mind you, this was the KIDS CHOICE AWARDS, but no… she wanted to be in the green room with other celebs. She left, and never went back to her seat (which was the WHOLE reason I was there). Ha! Diva in training… I did have other great experiences there though. Adam Sandler said hello to me, Adam Levine winked at me, and I saw Jack Black singing to his escort. << Really? Why couldn’t I get Jack Black?!?
Last but not least, John Stamos aka Uncle 
Jesse from Full House. Your Mom and her friends came to visit me while I was a freshman in college. Naturally, I took them to Disneyland because it was 20 mins from school. I wanted to show her a few cool tricks I learned, one of them being: renting a wheelchair to cut all the lines. ( Yes, I’m going to HELL. It’s a terrible thing to act injured to cut lines!!!) That day, John Stamos was there. He was being escorted by Disney personal. It was a hot and crowded day. And there I was in a wheelchair. Amidst all the people, he made eye contact with ME, and made a B-line over to me. I mean, literally stopped in mid conversation and booked it over. Oh boy, he thinks I’m injured. Oh dear Lord. Naturally, he comes down to my level, gets on his knee and asked me what happened. I couldn’t say anything. I couldn’t lie, especially to this BEAUTIFUL man. He smiled, and said “Oh, you must be tired huh?” We all had a good laugh. We introduced ourselves and took a picture with him. He was a great guy.
Those are a few funny encounters. What can we learn from this?
- Passing up an opportunity to hang out with celebrity sucks and you’ll kick yourself later.
- Being a diva will FOLLOW you. People will never forget the time they had with you, and every time they see you or hear about you, they will remember that experience. So be nice to the “little people” because those “little people” tell their “little people” friends about that time you were acting like you were a Goddess.
- Celebrities can be really nice and down to earth. << If you become a celebrity someday, be this kind.
With all of this said, the Oscars are just around the corner…and I couldn’t be more excited. I’ll will fill you in with my predictions for my next post.
With love,
Aunt Megs
With Love, Aunt Megs 
Megan, this is adorable! Great stories! HP always has seemed like a b-word which is funny because she can’t act or sing and she is only mildly pretty as far as Hollywood goes. She should really count her blessings.