• August 25, 2011
• 69 notes

I’m a little hesitant to write this post, because I worry the outpouring of emotion around Steve Jobs’ departure as Apple’s CEO might result in a strange sort of one-upsmanship, to the point that these personal anecdotes take on a saccharine quality.

Then again, it’s fucking Steve Jobs. I’m sad.

One of my more anti-social traditions in college was to lock myself in my room for every Apple keynote and watch the video in its entirety, reveling in each of Steve Jobs’ perfectly-executed ‘One More Things’ and yelling through the door at my roommates to shut the hell up whenever necessary.

Of course, Apple keynotes are not live-streamed. There’s a several-hour delay before they’re posted online — but the news starts spreading immediately. Which means that on each of these days, there was a perilous window of time during which I went to extreme lengths to avoid ruining the news for myself.

Televisions, with their spoiler-spewing talking heads, were the devil. The Internet was littered with landmines, and was best avoided entirely. Even text messages from friends suddenly became dangerous (no, I don’t know if you should buy the new PowerBook). Oh, and I may have equipped myself with occasional hand-earmuffs during walks to class.

In hindsight, I suppose it isn’t so surprising that I eventually started writing about technology for a living.

Anyway, the point is that despite my negative stance pertaining to some of Apple’s policies, I’ll always have a soft spot and deep respect for the company and its leaders.

But my own anecdote about Steve Jobs doesn’t have anything to do with leadership or an Apple product or anything else like that. I just think it’s nice.

In the fall of 2008 I lived in downtown Palo Alto, the nearly-Utopian chunk of suburbia that Steve Jobs also calls home. Anyone who’s lived there has seen Jobs strolling down the street or riding his bike around, so it’s not as if he’s a recluse, but my encounter with him caught me off guard all the same.

I was walking down the stairs in the Borders on University Ave (which, as it happens, is much quainter than the Borders you find in shopping malls). As I reached the bottom of the stairs, I noticed that the man standing in front of me in the otherwise empty room was Steve Jobs.

He was wearing his standard jeans and turtleneck uniform, calmly reading the back of a book. I almost vomited. My double-take came back for a third and fourth round, which made me look like I was having a seizure. It wasn’t one of my proudest moments.

I picked up a book that I can’t remember the title of, because I never actually looked at it. I vaguely remember using the reflection of book’s shiny cover to survey the situation.

What to do? One of my heroes was standing not ten yards away from me. Nobody was there to divert his attention.  I certainly wasn’t afraid of approaching him. And yet… it was Sunday afternoon, and he was standing in a bookstore.

There was something sacred about that.

I decided to stay put and discretely watch him from afar, rather creepily. I was soon glad I didn’t say anything.

A few minutes later his wife, Laurene Powell, walked up to him with a handful of books. They chatted for a moment about one of them, then walked over — his hand resting on her back — to the cash register. They paid just like everyone else did. The cashier either didn’t know who he was or had met him a hundred times before and was totally unfazed. The couple could not have looked more happy.

As they walked past me toward the exit, I came dangerously close to blurting out something along the lines of, “I’m a big fan”, but stifled it so that it sounded like an especially-phlegmy cough. Steve didn’t even notice.  Mrs. Powell looked me in the eye and gave me a little smile, almost as if to thank me for letting them be. Or maybe she’s just friendly.

Either way, that moment stuck with me. This story doesn’t have a climax or a humorous ending. It’s just a reminder that while Steve Jobs is a great leader and an inspiration, he’s also a man with a family that loves him, and I think it’s too easy to forget that.