All of the recent hullabaloo about the Olympic torch run protests against China’s human rights violations got me thinking about the guys who lived across the hall from me when I lived in the dorms freshman year at Cal.

Berkeley has a rightfully earned reputation for liberal weirdness, but the University itself, for better or worse, has become significantly more conservative over the years. Of course, conservative to Berkeley is still loony left to most of the rest of the nation.

Case in point, the neighbors across the hall. I forget their names, so we’ll call them George and Lenny. They were two skinny white guys from different parts of California and they were Maoist Communisits. I don’t mean this in the sense that they merely occasionally defended the tenets put forward by Chairman Mao and frequently voted for the Green Party - they wore military hats with red stars and green military uniforms pretty much wherever they went,  copies of their little red books tucked neatly in their pockets. In addition to being, shall we say, anti-social, they were also clearly homosexual, a fact I only point out because I’m pretty sure Mao wasn’t a member of PFLAG, if ya know what I mean.

Word got around campus that the Dalai Lama was coming to speak at the Greek Theater. Tickets were free, but you had to request them in advance. By the time I finally got off my lazy butt to try and get tickets, they were long gone. My buddy Jason suggested we just go up to the Greek and see whether they might let us in anyway.

When we arrived, we hooked up with another friend who also didn’t have a ticket but thought he, too might get lucky. And what do you know? Immediately someone walked up to us and said, “Hey, I have two extra tickets. Interested?” Totally free, totally kismet. We took the tickets, but lamented openly that there were three of us - where would we get a third ticket?

“Oh, you need a ticket?” said another guy walking by. “I have an extra. Here!” Totally awesome.

On our way in, we passed a small two-man protest. Now, I had expected to see some Dalai Lama supporters waving “Free Tibet” banners, but they were elsewhere on the campus. No, these two were protesting the Dalai Lama himself in support of China’s occupation of Tibet. And, wouldn’t you know it, it was George and Lenny, dressed to the nines in their maoist best, loudly reading quotations from the glorious leader.

“You’re protesting the Dalai Lama?” I asked, incredulous.

“Of course!” They each threw in their two cents.

“He spreads lies about the glorious Chinese people and is eroding our national character!” (I mentioned that neither of them were of any kind of asian descent, right?)

“The Tibetans are terrorists who torture their own people!”

“The Glorious Leader only wants to bring all of China together for the glory of her people! The Tibetans resist what’s only best for them!”

They kept foaming on and on even as we backed slowly away.

As we walked into the Greek, The Dalai Lama himself was almost responsible for my next incarnation (probably as a polar bear on the melting ice cap). As I expressed my shock to my companions regarding a protest against the Dalai Lama, I began wandering across the driveway leading into the back area of the Greek. A black limo drove right in front of me, missing my toes literally by inches. As I turned to curse the driver, I could see two ochre robed figures flanking a larger robed figure in the backseat. The Dalai Lama’s bespectacled profile was unmistakable as he turned to one of his companions. Hence one of my favorite - literal! - brushes with fame.

I don’t remember much about the rest of the day. We heard the Dalai Lama speak and I was awed, but his message of peace, tolerance and patience was nothing I hadn’t heard before. Of course, it’s a might different when it’s coming directly from the mouth of the very ambassador for those same ideas. It struck me how humble the Dalai Lama truly was and how amazingly gracious he was in speaking. I don’t think I have ever seen a speaker appear so grateful for the opportunity to be there, as if he was the lucky one able to score a last second ticket to the event. That was truly something worth seeing.