4 or 5 Things You Don't Know About Me

Nora Ephron is LOL (Nettalk for "laugh out loud.") funny. Her take brought me to realize that it was time for full(er) disclosure. Ephron did not disclose the fact that she knew the identity of Watergate's "Deep Throat" long before (retired FBI official) Mark Felt came out in the open. Ephron probably used her allotment of words before she could add that unknown feature about herself. Given her incredible life-journey, I imagine that Ephron could expand this self-revelation into a book. (Perhaps this Op-Ed piece is a trial balloon?) In any event, the thought that this blog has been droning on and on since June 2003 without any Ephron-like self disclosure caused my interior voice to say, "It's time, now." Here goes:

1. Like "Our Gal Sunday," I grew up in a "little mining town in the West."


2. I am a child of divorce (in a mixed-marriage) and I have divorced twice myself.


3. After a failed college athletic career, I turned to officiating and I worked high school (mostly) and college football and basketball in CO, NM, IA, IL, and TX.


4. I never wrote a book because I was lazy and lacked the sitzfleisch to accomplish that task.

If this is (fair & balanced) gut-spilling, so be it.

[x NY Fishwrap]
Four or Five Things You Don’t Know About Me
By Nora Ephron

The other day I was walking down the street and I realized that everyone was wearing earmuffs. I myself was wearing earmuffs at the time, but that wasn’t the reason I noticed all the other earmuffs — I noticed them because I happen to know that I personally started the trend of earmuffs. I began wearing them at the age of 21, when you could barely find a pair in a store, which doubtless was one reason no one wore them but me. The only ones for sale were made of felt, came in two separate bits and hooked over your upper ear and then snapped against your head. They were inadequate thermal protection compared to my current pair, which are made of fake fur; but they were far superior to being outdoors in winter without anything at all over your ears. I had serious fantasies that by wearing them, I would start something, fashion-wise, and now it seems I have. It’s true it’s taken a while, 45 years to be exact, but earmuffs are definitely catching on, and it’s because of me.

Seeing all those earmuffs reminded me that there are a number of things about me that people may not be aware of, and this may be the time to set the record straight. For instance, I am the only person who seems to know what Charles Dickens died of. In his biography of Dickens, Fred Kaplan writes that Dickens died of a brain hemorrhage after several years of somewhat puzzling symptoms; but it was clear to me from reading the Kaplan book that in fact Dickens had a case of multiple sclerosis and all his other illnesses were collateral to it. I almost called up Mr. Kaplan to tell him my diagnosis (which, by the way, I managed to make on the basis of no medical knowledge whatsoever), but then I thought about whether he wanted to hear this, from a total stranger, his book already being in print and all, and I decided, probably not.

I’ll tell you something else I know that no one else does: Joe Kennedy was not a bootlegger. When Prohibition was ending, he made a deal to import White Horse Scotch into the United States, but he had nothing whatsoever to do with the illegal liquor business before that. I can’t tell you how many people I have told this to, some of them very important, and yet the myth persists. All sorts of biographers and journalists casually insist that Kennedy was a partner of Frank Costello and Al Capone during Prohibition. It’s so not true! And I happen to be an expert on the subject — I spent several years of my life researching a book on the American liquor industry. I finally came to my senses and never wrote it and even returned the advance to the publisher (for which I deserve a plaque). But I’m left with a huge amount of information on the subject, most of it only moderately interesting, including this important fact about Joe Kennedy that no one seems to care about but me. Frankly, I’m not even sure his own family cares. How ironic is that?

One last thing about me I’d like you to know is that I invented the concept of authenticity. I did. I first began talking about it when Ed Koch was mayor of New York. For many years, Mr. Koch could do and say just about anything and still keep getting elected. Why? I’ll tell you why: he clearly believed what he said he believed. And that was all anyone cared about. In short, he had authenticity, and it trumped politics. Obviously I’m not saying that no one before me had ever said the word “authenticity,” but I promise you that no one had ever used it in connection with politicians, and no one was ever so repetitive on the subject: I have mentioned this theory to just about everyone I have had dinner with for the past 30 years, and it almost cost me my marriage because spouses can live through only so much repetition. Now, of course, it’s everywhere; you can barely get through an episode of “Hardball” without some talking head blathering about authenticity and I never get the credit.

Incidentally, I am at work on a weight-loss regimen that involves eating chili con carne twice a day, a theory about the Clinton marriage that is going to change the way everyone sees it, and a campaign to stamp out the fish fork. Stay tuned.

[Nora Ephron, the author, most recently, of I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman, is a contributing columnist for The Times.]

Copyright © 2008 The New York Times Company

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