https://twitter.com/jumblejim/status/555858588955320320
In college, I dated a celebrity. He wasn’t famous at the time. Far from it. He was a guy tending bar and enrolled in grad school. We went out a few times. He was such a nice guy that when he found someone else, he actually apologized. Who does that? I’ll admit. It stung a little, but I got over it. He was 24, a Marine back from Viet Nam. I was 18, one semester removed from the high school cheerleading squad. In spite of my lack of worldliness, we became friends.
https://twitter.com/jumblejim/status/539657088134168576
That friendship led to the stage, where we played opposite one another in a student directed production of a Ray Bradbury short story, The Small Assassin. I’m pretty sure the show was awful. How could it not be? A demon possessed baby kills its mother by leaving toys on the stairs. The highlight was my pratfall off a platform, painted modular-set-piece gray. Despite the fact that I masticated scenery, he wanted to put together a real production of Tennessee William’s The Glass Menagerie. He asked me to play Laura Wingfield, but the work never panned out.
https://twitter.com/jumblejim/status/559038352754610177
Instead, he left for California. He wrote plays and screenplays, married, and became a character actor with a billion TV and movie credits. Ironically, he shared billing, more than once, with a former student of mine, Abby Brammell, but I didn’t realize it was him until I turned on a re-run of Supernatural to watch Jared Padalecki, who I knew from high school speech tournaments. Whoo! That’s a lot of name dropping for one sentence.
His wife died from lung cancer, and he wrote a best selling memoir about it, Life’s That Way. I cried reading it. The book is beautiful, sad, and hopeful. And although I don’t have a single picture or playbill from the time we knew one another, I recognized the young man in the photo section of his book.
https://twitter.com/jumblejim/status/541550997198602240
I follow him on Twitter along with a 622,000 others, mostly women. But I don’t feel comfortable tweeting at him, “Hey, remember when…” I’m way past the fangirl stage. I remember when we called them groupies. If we met again I’d say,
I’m sorry you lost your wife. We have daughters the same age. Success couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy. It’s great to see you again, Jim.
CRISPLY SPOKEN 