Liz . . you brought back memories with your tooth story.  I will just tell the beginning of mine:  while on a plane to the tip of South America, the first step in a 45 day long journey to Antarctica, I felt something like a stone in my mouth.  I took it up, gazed long and hard at it, and tried to figure where it had come from.  A trip to the john told me that my front top tooth had broken off in half across. 

I returned to my seat, and said to a complete stranger as I showed her:"What should I do?"  She said and I quote"You look like a halloween pumpkin!"  5 days with strangers on an icebreaker and I looked liked a Halloween pumpkin.  I wanted to turn around and go home.  But I couldn’t.

At the dock in a blinding thunderstorm at night, I told the trip leader who looked at the dirt streets running back from the dock and shrugged.  I got into the raft to get out to the icebreaker in the rain.

Half way, another raft pulled alongside, saying "leave all your worldly goods on the raft and someone will get them to the ship" and now JUMP between rafts on a rough sea and I will take you back into the small town and find a dentist.

As the largest icebreaker in the world sat with all its passengers waiting, I was taken back to a dentist from the 16th century in a tiny hut high up on the dirt road into the mountains  who did not speak English. 

The rest is a story in itself — but it equals if not beats Mike Wallace - though hardly anything could!!  Joan

I was late to an important meeting, and careened into the ladies room for a quick visit. It was empty; I sat in my stall, combing my hair, applying my lipstick, straightening my scarf, etc.

I heard someone coming in and entering the next stall. Two huge black wingtips were inches from my pumps.

I abruptly stopped my multitasking, and fled the men’s room. Minutes later, as the meeting organizer spoke, and I gathered my wits, I realized that the guy who had arrived even later than I had….huge black wingtips. Yikes. 

I remember well, one day, while a junior in high school, in the mid-1960’s, I was wearing a new wrap-around skirt and thought that I was a fashion plate and full of myself.  While changing from one class to another, the skirt got caught in my leg brace.  I fell and so did the skirt all around me.

Thankfully, the only thing sprained that day was my pride. 

Liz- Thank you for my laugh of the day!! Just the picture of you trying to hold onto your grace & dignity in that moment reminds me of all my OOPS! moments. I’m sure you faired better than I. Now I know what I will buy once I find a job—your book/s. You really crack me up! Thanks again—I needed this.

And you hate when that happens.

In my case, it’s a glass eye that loosens when I’ve had a tich too much Courvasier. 

In elegant restaurants, if it pops out, it invariably lands on the tine of a salad fork, projecting it further and deeper into the room.

Searching for your eye is a futile exercise (a little like betting on the bank.) That’s why I never book dinner in the Polo Room with Mike Wallace…Marcia Wallace, maybe.