I Didn't Ask to Be Born

Center Street

ME AND MARCIA: YOU BET YOUR LIFE

Ladies and gentlemen, what you are about to read is a perfect example of the perfect guest on a talk show. At the time of this interview, I believed strongly that I had found the format for the rest of my career. The ratings would prove me wrong, I’m sorry to say.

However, after thousands of hours of interviews of human beings who have something unusual in their lives—don’t we all—this young lady, with her southern accent and completely natural delivery, represents the most perfect guest and the most enjoyable. Not narcissistic. Not arrogant. Just the most fantastic guest.

And so I am proud to present to you my most perfect moment as a television talk show host. (I leave out the game show part because I think that’s what caused the cancellation.)

And so there you have it. The perfect onetime conversation. And I say “onetime conversation” because I don’t know what other subjects she could discuss if we brought her back. And, in fact, nobody said—maybe because the show didn’t last that long—we’ve got to have her back on the show. Then she would come back and it would be a nightmare because she would not be as wonderful as before. What she did the first time created an unbeatable mark, whether you’re high-jumping or doing the limbo.

But I do believe it is great that we did this one thing together.

BERNADETTE

Those of you who are from, like, zero up to about forty-five years old, I’m going to tell you a story that happened in the fifties. It’s about a girl named Bernadette Johnson. But I want you to know I’m not bragging.

When old people start to talk about “their time,” there is a tendency for young people to doze. And young people always say:

That was before my time.

But I just want young people to know we’re not bragging about what we had to do in those days. You’re not bragging when you talk about having to walk five miles in eight-foot snowdrifts. There’s nobody on the face of the earth born who woke up knowing that he or she had to walk five miles in eight feet of snow, with no shoes, who said:

Oh goody! I’ll have something to tell young people.

No, you don’t do that. You say the same thing anybody else would say:

Why me?

And your parents say:

Because I had you.

Now, when I was a kid, there was no law protecting us from old people. Let me put it to you this way. There was no saying:

Well, he’s having a bad day.

There was no psychologist, no psychiatrist, that anybody paid attention to, because crazy people didn’t want to be crazy. See, crazy people get mad if you say they’re crazy. They didn’t want you to know they were crazy, so they were always trying to hide the fact that they were crazy. But everybody knew they were crazy.

Now, when I reminisce about the forties, I repeat, I am not bragging. I’m just relating my experience growing up and looking back on it today. It would be the same if Charles Lindbergh sat here to talk about his flight across the Atlantic in a single-engine plane. He’s not bragging; he’s telling the truth. He would’ve loved to have had a twin-engine jet, with instruments, and radar, and all of that, so he could’ve gone to sleep.

When I was thirteen, there was a girl, many girls, actually, and they always seemed to be armed with some kind of question I wasn’t ready for. One girl, she was just gorgeous. So I went up to her. Now, in those days you would go up to a girl and ask:

Would you like to go out with me?

You didn’t need to do much more than that. Just walk up and say:

Would you like to go out with me?

We were thirteen so she would just say yes or no. Even if she said yes, you weren’t going to do much, because girls were taught to make the male behave. If you tried anything, they’d say:

Stop!

It was like Olympic boxing.

Stop!

Yes, okay.

And our job was to try to sneak up on her, so that she didn’t really think we were touching or anything. But she would still say:

Stop!

And you would stop.

So I went up to this one girl and said, “Would you like to go out with me?”

And she said, “Why do you want to go out with me?”

I said the only thing I was armed with:

“Because I love you.”

And I did. I did love her. I really did. That’s why I told her I loved her.

She asked me, “What is love?”

Now, this is a thirteen-year-old girl, asking me “What is love?” I’m not prepared. I just thought I would use the highest form of a feeling for her and she would “go out with me.” What’s wrong with her? Asking me “What is love?”

“It means that I love you,” I finally said.

“But what is love?”

“I just love you.”

And I was getting mad at her. I don’t love her anymore. Never mind. You ask all these questions, man.

When I turned fourteen, there was another girl. She was beautiful. One of the really great-looking ones, and like all the great-looking girls, she had an ugly friend. So you had to talk to the ugly friend first and get permission to talk to the great-looking one. Eventually I got past the ugly friend and was able to talk to the great-looking one, and the first thing I said to her was “I would like to go out with you.”

She said—very nicely, I remember—she said, “I would like for this to be platonic.”