PINE NUTS – Embarrassing Moments Part Two
December 31, 2024 | McAvoy Lane
I was on a down escalator once at Capwell’s when the skirt on the lady in front of me was suddenly swallowed up in the mechanical mouth waiting at the bottom of that ride, and her skirt completely disappeared. She fell down, and I fell on top of her. But as good fortune would have it, nobody was behind us to pile on, or hear her screams…
On another occasion, just before I retired from 35 years of portraying Mark Twain, I was to speak to a room full of California sign language folks at Harvey’s, at least I thought that’s who I was going to be seeing.
As I walked into Harvey’s I was greeted by a warmhearted lady who rushed over and gave me a hearty hug. Wanting to add a little sign language to my program, I asked her if she could show me how to say, “I (and I pointed to my eye) love (and I pointed to my heart) you (and I pointed to her.)
She looked at me like I had just escaped from the Tahoe asylum, then started laughing, and it dawned on me that I was somewhere out in left field. When she stopped laughing, she half-covered her mouth, and shared with me out of the other half of her mouth, “We make signs, billboard signs.”
So, no wonder she thought I had fallen in love with her at first sight, and that I wanted her to show me how I could tell her I loved her in sign language…
Finally, even our mutual friend Mark Twain endured an embarrassing moment…
“When I was fourteen years of age, 1850 or so, my sister Pamela threw a party and invited all the marriageable young people of Hannibal. I was not invited. But I was given a small part in a play as a bear, and they gave me a big brown hairy suit to wear.
A half-hour before the play was to begin, I withdrew to a vacant upstairs room to practice. I thought it was vacant, but there were a couple girls behind the shoji-screen, and they could see me, but I could not see them. Well, it was much too hot to practice in my bear suit, or even my clothes, so I stripped to the skin and threw myself into my work.
I was full of ambition, I capered around on all fours; I did everything a bear could do, some things no bear could do, some things no bear with any dignity would want to do, including standing on my head.
When I climbed into bed that night I found a note on my pillow. It read, ‘Sam, you played bare very very well.’
By the bye, Mark Twain said propitiously in 1899: “The Czar is ready to disarm: I am ready to disarm. Collect the others, it should not be much of a task now.” More recently, President Putin, in his annual address last month, quoted Mark Twain, upon which he received a round of laughter and applause…to be continued.