> I was so totally ignorant of his awesomeness that I'm ashamed.
I would speculate it's likely it made for a much more interesting conversation for both of you than if you had been aware of his accomplishments. You also got a much more interesting anecdote as a result of that.
FWIW I hadn't heard of him until your comment. I suspect for every one person I have heard of there's at least a hundred I haven't heard of whose accomplishments are no less great.
Unless you are a narcissist, it must really suck to be so famous that you can never have a conversation with anybody in a symmetric fashion.
In my college days, I often hitchhiked to places instead of taking the train. It was just more fun to talk to people of various kinds.
One day on my way back from a trade show about the future of technology (1992?), I get picked up by this chain smoking hippy guy in an old beat up Ford Escort.
We had a pleasant conversation. And then it suddenly hit me that I was talking to a famous (in my country) radio comedian.
And that’s where the conversation stopped.
It was exactly as you described: I just felt embarrassed talking about mundane stuff like the full color flat LCD panels that were so cool.
I would speculate it's likely it made for a much more interesting conversation for both of you than if you had been aware of his accomplishments. You also got a much more interesting anecdote as a result of that.
FWIW I hadn't heard of him until your comment. I suspect for every one person I have heard of there's at least a hundred I haven't heard of whose accomplishments are no less great.
Unless you are a narcissist, it must really suck to be so famous that you can never have a conversation with anybody in a symmetric fashion.