Lily And Me

BREATHE!

And practice random acts of beauty and kindness. If all of us did this, once every day, the world would be a wonderful place.

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I spoke of an incident in my life I doubted anyone else on my list had experienced, and there were several requests for more details. So…here they are.

One of the first jobs I had after college was as a tour guide at CBS Television. This was around 1977 or so. Tour Guides also worked as guards on the set (I worked Young and the Restless quite a bit, and heard fun scuttlebutt about David Hasslehoff) and ran messages to the dressing rooms.

Lily Tomlin was doing a special — it may have been her first. I’m not sure. I remember that Richard Pryor was a guest, and that there was an anti-war skit with a woman living in a little house in the middle of a battlefield. My impression was that Lily was battling with the executives who were worried about this skit, and it may have ultimately been bumped from that special to a later one.

But that’s not my story. I’d worked on the show, mostly watching the stage’s back door as equipment and cast and crew came in and out. I’m sure I’d exchanged brief greetings with her, and maybe Richard Pryor (no clear memory of that). I’d been working there most of the week.

I still lived in my mother’s house, I believe, and one day I had a dentist’s appointment. Dr. Peterson, the father of one of my best friends the terrific Calvin Peterson, who went on to play for the Dallas…