OMG!! You must tell me the Bale story. I am officially very envious of you!
Its kind of embarrassing.
And long!
I was working my early morning shift at the Albuquerque International Sunport. It was about 6am, and I was on the walk through metal detector of my line. It was December of 2005, nearing Christmas, so it was a madhouse even that early. And there he was. Standing in my line, taking off his shoes and emptying his pockets. I was in total disbelief. I knew he was around the state filming 3:10 to Yuma with Russel Crowe, but I never would have expected it!
He was with his wife and his little daughter, and he was having trouble putting the stroller into the X-ray machine. The wheels were down, and it won't go through unless the wheels are up. I could have just told him to flip it over, but I was in such shock I couldn't think of what to say. So all I said was,
"You might want to move that.
So he did "move that", back and forth, and I just kept saying it over and over. Finally a coworker saw him having trouble and flipped it over for him, and I said, "Yeah, move that!"
Okay, so I totally looked like an idiot already, so I wanted to fix it. I didn't want to tell him he was awesome in Batman since I was certain he hears it all the time, so I told him, "I loved you in Equilibrium!" He gave me the weirdest look and said, "Really?" and I waved for him to come through.
Now he's ready for me to clear him to go get his stuff, but I've already said something dumb twice now, and I wasn't quite ready for him to leave me! So quickly I asked him, "Want to hear a story?" He said yes!
I didn't have a story. I had to think of something really fast, so I said, "Why is it that tall people like you don't duck through the metal detector but short people do?"
He said he had no idea, and finally started to walk away. D'oh!
Thankfully, when I waved his little daughter through she ran up to me and grabbed my hand, and he and his wife had to take a few seconds to pry her off of me, so I got a few more seconds of face time.
I blew it, huh?