The summer after sixth grade I went out of the country for my first time. That was before the Mexico trips on the boat and my best friend, Shana Goldberg (daughter of Gary, Family Ties and Spin City) invited me to London for the filming of Family Ties in London. Gary and Diana paid for the whole thing, and would not let parents help, though perhaps parents gave them ticket money.
So Mom and Dad took me to airport to meet Shana and her nanny Betsy, a lovely Iowa girl out of college a few years. We had fun with Betsy and would shop at the Gap for lumberjack tops when that was a big thing, 1984.
They kissed me goodbye and we boarded, Shana, Betsy and I. There was a mechanical problem which required de-boarding and a considerable delay. So we got off the plane and went to go eat. Now , this is the part that is a bit fuzzy. The plane was huge, obviously, a nonstop to London as I remember, not a one-stop to NYC first.
Somehow the three of us did not get back in time and we called Gary and Diana, already in London, with, I believe their baby girl who was born when we were in 5th grade. Yes, that's right, because I remember Diana reproduced the nursery when they moved from that lovely two-story house on Anita in Brentwood, between Sunset and San Vicente, when they moved to the "big house," i.e. the house near OJ Simpson, up Oakmont past Rockingham. (I read in the LA Times, it sold last year for 16 million, holy shit). The Anita house was gorgeous, big yard and black bottom pool with royal blue tiles and a little guest house/office which Diana made her office.
She went back to school and got a Ph.D. from UCLA in communications (Sarah Palin's major at Idaho), mass communications was her specialty and to tell the truth, I am not often charitable about that major but don't know a whole lot about it. Diana wrote and studied in that back house and honestly, I think that my fantasy of being a literary critic /English professor started in about 4th grade when I thought, "Gee this seems like a very cool life, to be married to a TV sitcom legend with a heart of gold, a love of pro football/betting--he donated all winnings to liberal causes--and a beachhouse on Broad Beach, the Trancas part of Malibu, and then to write/study all day long..." Of course, I was 11 , so please cut me some slack. English and communications professors/doctorates don't live in houses in Brentwood on Anita south of Sunset/north of San Vicente, but at 11 you only have a certain breadth of understanding of real estate and money.
Gary and Diana were totally cool and I was very relieved. It was, of course, not my fault , or Shana's. We were 12. It was Betsy's responsibility to get us back on the plane at the designated time. I do seem to remember , later, that the airlines said that the repair had gone smoothly and finished ahead of schedule, but Dad said yesterday, "297 people got back on board and you three didn't?"
So driving back to the Oakmont house, we stopped for dinner and I called parents (also at dinner) to tell them we missed the flight. Dad was not angry or upset, just incredulous that he saw me board the plane (no security of course, you could go to the gate back then), and I had somehow managed to miss a flight which I had been ON, sitting in my little seat.
I guess the moral of the story is this: you are who you are. And if you are prone to accidents and fuck-ups, as Dad calls them (he loves to dissect the "anatomy of a fuckup" re plans which are complex, multiple stops, different drivers) at 12 or so, you will probably end up being the center of disaster later in life. I myself firmly believe that I have aliens in life. This is what my ex-boyfriend, 17 yrs older and highly organized, said of my propensity to lose things like keys, chargers, earrings, tops, bottoms, shoes, socks... But the aliens cut both ways; that is, sometimes aliens do michievous and naughty things like dismantle a pair of sunglasses sitting on the front seat of a locked car with the windows closed. Other times, they are benevolent and remove two small hair dye stains the size of 1 carat diamond studs from a used , 60 dollar Armani dress from Discovery Shop, a second-hand boutique all of whose proceeds go to the American Cancer Society. Mom buys 2/3 of her clothes there, used, and often shoes second-hand as well.
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