Facebook meme, better as a blog post

Over on Facebook there’s a meme going around, the gist of which is "What is something you have done that you're fairly confident you're the ONLY person on my friends list to have ever done? Given the wide range of people I know, I think this will be interesting."

I noted that a few who answered this offered up more than one event.

*** As for me: first time ever on the air in my radio career was afternoon drive in NYC - smack dab in the middle of the FM dial.

*** Had a gun held on me and four others by a rent-a-cop on the 7th floor of a mostly empty, closed for business hotel in a major city. He yelled, “hit the dirt!” The four others did. Immediately. Not me. As if by instinct I asked, “do you *really* mean lie down or you’ll shoot me? For standing here with my arms up, with these four watching? Do you have five pair of handcuffs?” He relented. We all took the elevator down. With him. He put his gun away. As you can imagine, it’s a much longer story.

*** Began a consulting firm at age 22. Had no clue that was a brash thing to do. The doors to that firm remain open.

*** At age 13 all at once I had viral pneumonia, encephalitis and spinal meningitis. All indications are it began after a week at the Doral Hotel in Miami. Oddly enough that was before #45IQ owned the place. Obviously it’s a cursed edifice.

Speaking of curses... 

*** Got cursed out by Mickey Mantle outside of Yankee Stadium. (NB: a lifelong friend was there, too.) The story has a very happy ending. We were 10 years old.

*** Introduced Frank Zappa & The Mothers of Invention onto the stage at their first appearance in Indianapolis.

*** Hung out with Prince at Paisley Park in advance of release of his Lovesexy album.

*** On a plane from NY to my client in Miami saw a man one row in front of me in the diagonal aisle seat slump over and die. He’d been sipping coffee just before that. That led to an emergency stopover in Baltimore where the pilot, the airport manager and the county medical person (maybe the ME, maybe not) entered into a prolonged argument over which of them had legal jurisdiction over the body. And there’s the guy’s dead body, still slumped over in his aisle seat. The airport doctor on duty declared the man dead. But he did so on the plane. So the pilot declared it occurred in his territory. The airport manager pointed out that this declaration occurred while the airplane was on the ground, so it was in his territory. The county guy said no, on the ground it’s in his county, so he’s the one. This dead man was really important. To the three of them, anyway. 

Meanwhile, arrival in Miami was two and a half hours late. I was just glad I hadn’t taken the flight attendant up on her offer of coffee. Look what it did to that fellow in the row ahead and across from me. 

For sure there’s more. This being a blog, I’ll add them if/as I think of them. Make that *maybe* I’ll add them. Readers of this blog know how posts and edits hereabouts are more happenstance than not. smiley

 

A Facebook hat tip to Enoch Choi, who inspired this post.

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