Holy crap, Canton is small.

We rolled into town with just enough time to check into the hotel and grab food before the show.  I asked the guy at the front desk if he had any recommendations for a restaurant that might be amenable to Bethany’s allergy-driven needs, and he laughed. “You’re in Canton. You went all the way to the edge of the Earth and took one more step.” We decided on Primo’s Subs & Pizza, where Sam, Amber, and I sipped phosphates (lime for me and Sam, cherry for Amber) as we waited for our pizzas.

The school which hired us was Culver-Stockton College, which was the only school that Amber, Sam, and I had also visited last year. (The two GTC casts pretty much swapped tour itineraries from last year.) Our contact remembered Amber and Sam, but not me. We credited my short hair and new glasses.

The show went well – the Culver-Stockton audiences are always great — and we were invited to join the students for pizza after the show. Even though we had just eaten pizza three hours before, we took them up on it. Sam brought his video camera and recorded interactions with students, and I brought my Pentax and snapped some still photos.

We snagged some slices of pizza while students complimented our performance, thanked us for coming, asked us about ourselves and our company, and occasionally flirted with us. Students all over the room greeted Sam with his signature “couple of beers” gesture from the show. See, there’s a scene where one of the actors plays a binge-drinking college kid named Jim. When asked in the talkback how many beers he’s had, he replies, “A couple of beers.” His girlfriend Anna pipes up that she was counting, and that he had eleven. The moderator asks, “Eleven is a couple?” Jim responds by holding up one finger on each hand, saying “one and one,” then bringing the fingers together to make the number eleven and says, “a couple of beers.” Something about the way Sam does it has turned it into a hit at every school. It’s his catch phrase. While Bethany spoke to our contact, and Amber and I ate pizza, Sam smoothly navigated the crowd like a rockstar, taping students doing the “couple of beers” thing.

Here is a picture that will make Amber furious:

It was already a good night, but one of my favorite parts was that, since I was driving, Bethany offered to let me have her single room, and she would stay with Amber.

It was great until I overslept and had to skip a shower the next morning. Alas, I would be scuzzy for our drive to Lincoln, Nebraska…