Telling Stories

Regular readers know that I listen to This American Life faithfully. Episode 226, Reruns, featured a short piece about Radio Lab’s host, Robert Krulwich, and his wife Tamar Lewin. Like many married couples, they are in the habit of telling the same stories. In one, Tamar is alone on Madison Avenue when she notices a familiar figure across the street; the woman seems to be waving at her. Amazingly, it’s Jackie Onassis! Lewin waves back, tentatively, at which point Jackie O waves even more vigorously. Just as Lewin is planning her next move, a taxi drives up and Mrs. Onassis gets in. Turns out she was waving down a cab, not a complete stranger.

When Robert Krulwich tells the story he is with his wife as it develops; they’re walking down Fifth Avenue, not Madison, with Central Park on their right. The rest of the story unfolds the same.

I was reminded of my New York run-in with a celebrity. I was a waiter at Steak and Brew, the one at 51st and Broadway. It was a place filled with tourists; we served forgettable steaks, an unlimited salad bar, and all the beer, or birch beer, you chose to drink. Just around the corner was the Mark Hellinger Theatre, where Coco was playing. It was a musical telling of Coco Chanel’s life and was written by Alan Jay Lerner. (Coincidentally, Lerner wrote another show that played at the Mark Hellinger, this one in the fifties: My Fair Lady).

One day I was rushing to work, not paying attention, when I ran into – literally, ran into – the star of Coco, Katherine Hepburn, who was hurrying to a matinee performance.

At first I grumbled, irritated by this clumsy woman who wasn’t looking where she was going. She, much more graciously, was concerned about me and asked if I was all right. Only then did I see who it was. OMG! Kate! Hepburn!

I assured her I was fine, and tried to assist her, though I was too flummoxed to make any sense. She waved me off, assuring me all was okay, and with a wave of her hand, was gone. I went into work, too stunned to talk at first, but then chattered excitedly to my friends about who I had just bumped into.

It was a glorious New York moment, and made for a story I told for years.

Like Robert Krulwich’s story though, it was not true. Just as he was never in his story, Katherine Hepburn was never in mine. The whole thing never happened.

I have no idea how the story began. It could have happened; I was working at Steak and Brew and Hepburn was in Coco, just around the corner, but, alas, I never saw her, neither on the street nor on the stage. After telling the story for years, and always getting a lot of laughs and oh-my-gods, I finally fessed up. I continued telling the story, but added a coda, admitting it was all fantasy.

People were bummed; they told me they’d rather go on believing the story. Hepburn was such an icon, and so beloved; the idea that someone they knew had actually spoken to her was too good to not believe.

So I dropped the coda, and told the tale as I "remembered" it.

Just as Robert Krulwich does. He admits he wasn’t there, but the story is so vivid in his mind that it’s worth retelling.

Sometimes we like our truths to be burnished a bit.