Almost Famous

My dream when I was nine was to make Katy S. a household name. I had just acquired my soundtrack for the Broadway version of Annie, and like any respectable girl in circa 1981 North Jersey, I spent the better part of my free time acting out every song in my driveway. On rollerskates. Wearing a purple leotard. And a pink boa. After all, living a half hour from New York City, a top acting agent could have driven by my house at any time, searching for new talent. With the genius idea of merging Annie with Xanadu, I considered myself well on my way to stardom.

I can safely say that none of you ever saw my name in lights. Still, every now and then I fall into a daydream of myself belting out a diva-song to a packed Broadway venue. My few brushes with fame have never been that dramatic.

Witness:

1) My dad's friend was dating a chick that used to be on The Edge of Night. She, in turn, used to date Randy Travis from WKRP in Cincinnati. Therefore, I was a mere three degrees of separation to the kind of fame that got people on Battle of the Network Stars.

2) I shook hands with Mohammad Ali when is was three. All I remember is being terrified of this massive hand coming at my face. I'm sure I wasn't the first to feel this way upon encountering the man.

3) My friend had asked me to take a knitting lesson with her, waaay before knitting was cool, so she wouldn't feel like such a dork. I obliged, under the condition that she breathed not a word of it to anyone. Unfortunately, that was the day the reporters showed up to profile the Trailblazing Generation X Knitters. Lo, my hands and mug took up the entire top half of our local paper's Living section. And yes, everyone saw.

4) When we lived in the hip and trendy part of the city, a 14 yr old boy was shot by police at the end of my dead-end street, as he was trying to run over a cop with a stolen car. No one was allowed off the street that day, and since a friend of mine was a local TV reporter, I was obliged to give her an interview on camera. I kept my answers brief and appropriately somber.

5) When I was five months pregnant with the twins, my OB put me on bedrest and told not to lift anything over 5 pounds. The next day, I decided to have one last hurrah with my older son at the beach. Feeling confident that I wasn't being watched, I picked my 30 pound son up by the arms an swung him out over the water--- about 15 times. To my horror, when I opened the local section of the paper the next day I found that, once again, I was taking up the entire top half of the paper, quite obviously not on bedrest and lifting something most definitely over five pounds. Not only did my OB call me to scream, but so did my former boss. See, I'm an OT who used to specialize in arm and hand rehab, and the number one thing we tell parents is to never lift or swing a child by the arms.

6) A few months ago, when exploring model homes in Canada with my friend's wife, a news team (yes, another one--- the paparrazzi's interest in me is international, apparently). The hottie reporter told us he wanted to interview us for a story about the impact high energy costs have on the decision to build a new home. We reluctantly agreed, because, again, he was HOT, and spent a few takes after my interview doing staged shots of Cathy and I walking in the distance together, looking at properties. Afterward, the guy thanked us, and asked us,

"So how long have you two been together?"

So in the end, no, I can say that I haven't found fame and fortune yet. But we're moving to another country this summer, and I'm sure the Canadian public is dying to know about the lesbian knitting American who can't stand high gas prices and likes to pretend she's throwing her son into the lake.