I was fresh out of college, looking to get a gig in journalism of some sort. I had been sent to the offices of CBS News, where I was to interview for what was, quite frankly, a pretty crappy job: I would be transcribing tapes of evening broadcasts. Sounds riveting, doesn’t it. I thought that perhaps it might be a foot in the door at CBS News. In retrospect, it probably wouldn’t have led to a dámņëd thing, and it’s probably better that I didn’t get the job.
In any event, I was sitting in the main lobby, waiting for the assistant to the assistant to the assistant to come down and fetch me out of there. It was late in the day. I was reading a newspaper and suddenly I heard the receptionist say, “Good night, Mr. Keeshan,” and a voice I had known since practically infancy replied, “Good night.”
I looked up and there was Bob Keeshan, not more than three feet away from me, heading out the front door.
I wanted to say something and my throat completely closed up. Not a syllable could I get out. I have no idea what I would have said–probably something stupid, or something he’d heard a million times from similar awestruck adults reduced to children in his presence. And there’s not a shred of doubt in my mind that he would have been very nice and very pleasant and very understanding because of all the times it must have happened to him.
But I said nothing, and then he was gone and out the door.
I sagged back in my chair and told myself that, if I got the job, I’d have plenty of chances to run into him once more. Except I didn’t, and more than twenty years later I never had another chance encounter with him or an opportunity to tell him face to face how much I enjoyed his show in my childhood.
Ðámņ.
I hope they drop ping pong balls at his funeral. I bet he’d love that.
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