Time & Perspective Quote by Mary Lou Retton

Retton’s line captures the weird physics of fame: it’s flattering until it becomes a stampede. As an athlete, she’s supposed to embody accessibility, the wholesome champion who signs for kids and smiles for cameras. She even opens with that expected generosity: “I usually don’t mind,” a disarming preface that protects her from sounding ungrateful. Then she snaps the frame into something closer to a survival story. “Hundreds of folks” turns admiration into a mass, and “paper and pen” reduces the crowd to a single repetitive demand. The fans aren’t villains, but they’re no longer individuals either; they’re a wave.

The key phrase is “start coming at you.” It’s not “asking” or “waiting” but advancing, shifting the autograph from a gift to a claim on her body and time. “Seek shelter” lands with a darkly comic bluntness: celebrity as weather event, the public as a storm system. That’s the subtext athletes often can’t say outright: attention is labor, and unchecked access feels like danger even when it’s love.

In the context of Retton’s era - peak American gymnastics celebrity, post-1984 glow, lots of public appearances and a tightly managed image - the quote reads like a boundary smuggled into a joke. It acknowledges the fans’ excitement while insisting, plainly, that adoration doesn’t cancel out personal space.