My Fan Club

I have a mind to join a club and beat you over the head with it.
Groucho Marx


I never dreamed that someday I’d have my own fan club.

To my amazement, I have one on Facebook. (Actually, I have two; but more on the second one later.)

And now that I have a fan club of my own, I find the experience a little bewildering. Two questions, in particular, plague me: What expectations do my “fans” have of me? And, will I be able to live up to these?

Yet I can deal with these concerns because any person who says that he or she wouldn’t love to have a fan club is more than likely lying.

Still, now that I have one, I feel undeserving. If I were a writer who has touched the hearts of thousands of readers I’d understand. But I haven’t done this—at least not yet.

The question then becomes, if I’m not exactly a well-recognized writer, how did the Silvio Sirias Fan Club get started?

A couple of years ago, my wife, Erinn, thought it would be a quaint idea to start a Bernardo and the Virgin Fan Club. She created a page on Facebook and invited our friends to join. Before long, close to forty—all of them friends of ours—had signed up.

I thought the Bernardo and the Virgin Fan Club was a cute idea, and since the club was devoted to the book, the attention wasn’t on me; or so I convinced myself. (This is the second fan club I referred to earlier.)

Lamentably, the Bernardo and the Virgin Fan Club has just sat there, static after the initial reactions, and waiting for someone (Is it supposed to be me?), to breathe life into it.

A year passed since the club’s creation when I received an email from our “foster” daughter, Isabel Montoya. (For more about Erinn's and my relationship with Isabel read "A Blessing for Isabel.") In the message, she wrote that she had created the Silvio Sirias Fan Club, also on Facebook. Isabel said that she believed that such a club would be more appropriate than the one devoted to my first novel because she knew the publication Meet Me Under the Ceiba was right around the corner. She added that she hoped I enjoyed the gift and that she had named me the administrator so I could manage the group myself.

I thanked Isabel, not really comfortable with the idea of managing my own Fan Club, and thought: Oh, well, it was a nice gesture. My plan became to let the group sit for a while—at least until Isabel had forgotten she had created it—and allow it then to die a natural death; at that point I’d delete it from Facebook. On the first day two persons joined: Isabel’s mother and my wife. That should be about all the members, I concluded; and I placed the Silvio Sirias Fan Club out of my mind.

That was about three months ago. Last week, a ninth-grader said to me, “I saw your Fan Club on Facebook, Dr. Sirias, and I joined.”

I smiled and thanked him. The following day, another student said the same thing, almost word for word.

That evening, while at home, I checked my Fan Club site. To my astonishment, fifty-seven fans had joined. (And as I write this there are now seventy-four fans, including a few persons I don’t know. I realize this is nothing compared to the 300,000 fans the Victoria’s Secret Fan Club has, but I’m happy.)

The club I had never suspected would take off has suddenly come to life. Gamuts of emotions are running through me because of the Silvio Sirias Fan Club—mostly confusion and apprehension—but also joy at being recognized as a . . . as a . . . as a what?

As a writer?

As a teacher? (Are the students who signed up trying to curry favor?)

As both?

The writer in me asks, “Have most of the Fan Club members read Bernardo and the Virgin?”

Will they rush out and purchase a copy of Meet Me Under the Ceiba the very day it’s released (September 30).

And, what am I going to do for my Fan Club?

To this last question, the teacher in me answers: “We will soon have a quiz on Bernardo and the Virgin. It will be in the form of a contest. The first person to answer the question correctly will win a prize.”

Stay tuned, details will be forthcoming within the next week for members of the Bernardo and the Virgin (click on name to visit site) and the Silvio Sirias Fan Clubs on Facebook.