25 Things

1. When JFK was running for President, he came to Chicago and my mom and I went to O'Hare airport just to see him step off a plane.
2. My high school freshman English teacher was Judith Pildes Arcana, who became a feminist author. She was a ‘Jane’ – a member of the Chicago underground service that helped 11,000 women get safe illegal abortions before Roe vs. Wade was made law in 1973.
3. Once I rode my bike down a flight of about 50 stairs. The bike was destroyed and I’m lucky I wasn’t.
4. While dining in a neighborhood restaurant in LA, we were seated at a table next to Penny Marshall, Terri Garr & Steven Spielberg. They were talking about ‘Dustin’ and I was eavesdropping. This was during the time Tootsie was being filmed. I got Penny’s autograph.
5. The first concert I ever saw was Herman’s Hermits & The Hollies in 1967 at McCormick Place about 3 days before it burned down. I’ve also seen Jim Croce, Harry Chapin, Woody Allen, and George Carlin, among others.
6. I played first trumpet in my 4th grade band. I had an overbite. That’s why.
7.One time my friend Rose Kostan and I took the train to Union Pier, Michigan to spend time at our family cottage under the supervision of my grandmother. We met some guys who invited us to a beach party. So after my Grandmother went to bed, we made up these fake dummy bodies in our beds and snuck out. It’s the most daring, disobedient thing I ever did. We never got caught.
8. My boyfriend Mike Sullivan took me on a date to a restaurant that had a fortune teller. He looked at my palm and told me I would have 4 children, and that some day I would sing in front of many people (which I do, in church)
9. The day I turned 16, my step-father took me to get my driver’s license at Elston Ave. in Chicago. We misunderstood our instructions – my dad and I were supposed to bring our car around to the start of the course. But he handed me the keys and I went out to get the car myself. I was so nervous, I crashed into a red car parked next to me, but then I brought the car to the course and went through the test, and failed. When we were done, Robert came out to the car and noticed the dent and automatically assumed that some red car had crashed into HIM while the car had been parked. He went storming around the lot to find the red car. I was too petrified to tell him it had been me. He never found out. Wait a minute – I think I may have told him a few years ago when I saw him at my mom’s house……
10. My first car was an orange 1965 Mustang with black leather interior. I got it used in 1971.
11. I used to work at the Arlington Park Race Track. Once I rode in an elevator with Milton Berle who was a guest of the owner.
12. Also at AP – I used to take people up to the press box which was 5 stories up under the eaves of the roof. You could walk out onto a catwalk and watch Phil Georgeff call the race from five feet away.
13. Dave Feldman was a famous horse racing sports writer in Chicago. He would come into my office once in a while, and one time I asked him about an acronym he used a lot in his writing – a BDH. I told him I enjoyed reading his columns but asked him, “What is a BDH?” He told me it was a Broken Down Handicapper. I think I charmed him because the next day he wrote about me in his column.
14. The first job I ever had was slinging burgers at a fast food joint. I was 14.
15.My first office job was at Fel-Pro in Skokie, the famous gasket manufacturer. I was a marketing secretary and I used to send out free head gaskets to car guys who would send me their makes & models.
16. Before Heather was born, I was hospitalized for 2 days with pre-eclampsia because my feet swelled up and my blood pressure jumped. I had to have my wedding ring cut off.
17. I played league racquetball for 20 years, first as a ‘C’, then as a ‘B’, and for the last 10 years I was an ‘A’ player.
18.I was a Girl Scout cookie mom several years in a row. One year I handled cookie sales for two troops and we had thousands of boxes of cookies in our garage.
19. After Heather was born I taught myself how to embroider using stitch diagrams and cloth diapers.
20. I traced one line of our family genealogy to 1635.
21. I have touched the Eiffel Tower.
22. When I was in college, we played a prank on our friend Oli. We took everything out of her room – I mean EVERYTHING. Furniture, clothes from her closet, stuff on the walls, personal junk. We put it all in the stairwell and waited for her to come home. When she walked into the empty room, the look on her face was priceless. We put everything back…….
23. I was secretary of our bowling league for many years.
24. I tried out for Ted Mack’s original Amateur Hour when I was about 10. I sang Moon River.
25. TEAM ERIC.