If I Only Knew Then...

by Charles Grodin

  They wouldn’t be asking about Ernestine or Edith Ann anymore; they wouldn’t be snorting or fingering the insides of their shirts or blowing raspberries in theater lobbies or pushing shopping carts down the aisles.

  They’d say, “You know, when she wore Cher’s dress on the Oscars, we laughed our asses off; we fell off the couch, and we couldn’t take our eyes off the TV. Every time the camera moved, we screamed, ‘Give us another shot of Lily and the dress!’”

  I can just hear them, fans all over the world: “That was the one time, Lily, that my husband and I—and the kids—got together, and we could watch something that we all got a kick out of, all of us laughing at the same time. It brought us together, and I have never, ever, ever forgotten that night. The family, even now, when we get together for Thanksgiving, we say, ‘Remember that night Lily wore Cher’s dress to the Oscars?!?’”

  It would have been a touchstone for so many people, creating a bond between us that could never be broken. That’s a real service to humanity. If we bumped into each other from time to time, on the street or at the movies, we wouldn’t have to speak; no, we’d just look at each other, our heads bobbing up down with shared recall, our front teeth buried in our lower lips, a smile at the corners of our mouths. We might even feel so at one with each other that we’d make those whooping sounds that come with genuine ease and shared humor.

  And it would someday be on my tombstone: Remember that night she wore Cher’s dress to the Oscars.

  But I didn’t and none of it will ever be. I let everyone down, especially myself.

  WHAT I LEARNED

  Every day, take “your one wild and precious life” and fly.* The feather headdress would’ve helped. Just my luck.

  SHELDON SCHULTZ

  President, TMG Artists Agency, Inc.

  I dreamed about becoming the world’s greatest, thinnest, handsomest operatic tenor! Nothing wrong with that notion. It was possible, and still is. All I had to do was study and practice, keep fit, maybe get a nose job and, if need be, a little Botox here and there. I looked around and saw a bunch of fat Italians and Swedes and felt there was a huge, unfilled opening in the marketplace for a guy who could sing like Pavarotti and looked like Paul Newman. Man, money would be the cheapest thing I got! Not to mention chicks. It’s clear I never took the next important steps. Didn’t follow the dream. Huge mistake! Not that I didn’t have a wonderful career. My life has been very cool, and for the most part joyful, in spite of my mistake.

  WHAT I LEARNED

  In the final words of the great African drummer Babe Olatunji, “Live your life so when the time comes for the funeral the preacher won’t have to bullshit the peoples.”

  JUDGE JUDY SHEINDLIN

  Television Personality

  If you’re smart there are no mistakes—just learning experiences. Many years ago, when a woman attorney was about as welcome in the workplace as a skunk at a lawn party, I had one of those “learning experiences.” My supervisor adopted one of my suggestions and passed it on as his own. I didn’t confront him—I just boiled. It’s one of those things that women often did, and still do, to ensure they were liked, as opposed to being respected and liked. Well, he was happy as a clam with all the accolades while I added two stress lines to my face.

  WHAT I LEARNED

  Trust me, it never happened again. In my professional world I strive to be respected—being liked is a bonus.

  BARBARA FELDON

  Actress (Agent 99, Get Smart)

  One of the sharpest regrets I have can’t be fixed. It involves the happiest year of my childhood and my sixth-grade teacher, Miss Pierce.

  When I met her I was a chubby refugee from Hillcrest Grade School, a soot-encrusted stump of a building that squatted on a sea of gravel near a coal mining town south of Pittsburgh. While there I’d developed a florid school phobia. Every day I was tortured with anxiety inspired by our trucklike principal, who was also our fifth- grade writing teacher.

  We could hear her in her office, pounding the bejesus out of some huge kid from Mine Three, the splat of her wooden paddle with a hole in middle, and her voice like Grendel’s snarling, “I’m going to knock you through the wall!”

  While we practiced the Peterson Method (round, round, ready, write, one, two, three . . .), dutifully curving o’s between blue lines on our pages, she would stalk massively up and down the aisles. When I felt her pause behind me I’d inwardly shrink; and then her huge fat hand would lower itself in front of my face, pounce on my page like a tarantula, crumple it, lift it a few pregnant inches, and drop it like a withered, contemptible ball before my stricken eyes.

  That was the background to my entering, with shaking knees, Miss Pierce’s sixth-grade class the following year when my family moved to a different school district in Pittsburgh.

  Miss Pierce was angular, with severe hair and dark laser eyes—and she wasn’t smiling. I soon realized she had no truck with being charming; she was only interested in us, seeing into each of us, gleaning the larval potential lurking there that she might bring to light.

  She encouraged me to recite poetry (to this day my favorite way to perform), and her praise radiated through me like sunshine. She made algebra seem like magic and diagramming sentences like a game, and she enthralled us with stories about “thoroughbreds”—children who act honorably even in the worst of circumstances. Miss Pierce exposed us to the first classical music we’d ever heard; I remember eagerly listening for the horns growling in the Hall of the Mountain King in Edvard Grieg’s Peer Gynt Suite.

  Every day of that blessedly phobia-free year was an adventure, and I came away owning more of myself than I’d imagined existed.

  One afternoon Miss Pierce told us a high school senior stopped her on the street to say how much her sixth-grade class had meant to him. She was touched he’d remembered her. Wondering how she could think any of us would ever forget her, I planned to return one day to prove I hadn’t.

  Years later, while in Pittsburgh doing promotion for Get Smart, I tried to find Miss Pierce, imagining she would still be in our beloved sixth-grade room. I was stunned to hear she had died several years earlier.

  WHAT I LEARNED

  It was a painful but important lesson that it’s perilous to put off thanking those who have touched one’s life and heart. I’ll forever regret postponing the gratitude that would have brought her pleasure. It can’t be fixed—I can only offer it here. Thank you, Miss Pierce.

  MARIO CUOMO

  Governor of New York,

  1983–1994

  Ever since Adam nibbled at the forbidden fruit we have all been doomed to a life speckled with pimples where there might have been beauty marks, temptations we couldn’t resist, and plain old mistakes in judgment. Some of the most regrettable of the mistakes are those made by politicians; they can wind up getting a nation into a war that wasn’t necessary or an economy that’s good for the few at the expense of the many, or they can mean even several years of wasted opportunity. I made a mistake like that in the campaign for president in 1988. I was reminded of it the other day by the candidate I supported and wanted desperately to win in that election, Governor Michael Dukakis.

  There’s no doubt in my mind that Mike, a three-term governor of Massachusetts who led his state to what was called the “Massachusetts Miracle,” would have made a great president. He was, and still is, a man of superior intelligence, vast experience, unquestioned personal integrity, and a quiet and unassuming but unmistakable charm. By the end of the Democratic Convention most of the voters apparently agreed with that assessment. He was seventeen points ahead of George Herbert Walker Bush in the race, and there didn’t seem to be any way Bush, who had a quiet and not well-known record as vice president, could catch him. But the Republicans had a secret weapon, a fiery, tough, and ruthless South Carolina political consultant named Lee Atwater who believed no blow was too low to be struck in a political fight. The Bush campaign went negative with an indecency and effectiveness that set a n
ew and dismal standard for political mud wrestling. The best-remembered blow was the Willie Horton commercial that falsely suggested Mike had personally furloughed a convicted murderer who used the opportunity to rape a woman and kill her husband. Mike had nothing to do with the furlough; it wasn’t even part of his governor’s programs.

  More attacks followed in a campaign later described as amazingly vicious, personal, and distorted. Phony smears were directed at Mike’s wife, his loyalty to his religion, even his psychological health. Mike was obviously concerned about the attacks, especially those leveled at his lovely wife, and he turned to some of his advisers for suggestions. I was not a formal part of the campaign or even a major adviser, but he did ask me for an opinion as well. I had been through some difficult campaigns myself, and I’m sure he had that in mind.

  My own attitude on campaigning was a lot like Mike’s. It was summed up by a memorable line from an old Democratic congressional leader who said, “Any jackass can kick down a barn but it takes a good man to build one.” Mike campaigned on the high road and didn’t want to step down from it to start responding in kind to the Bush assault. The polls hadn’t yet changed much, and so, with a degree of smugness, I told Mike he should ignore the attacks and continue going forward as he always had, making the case for himself and his policies proactively and criticizing Bush’s views on the merits substantively. “You’re no jackass, Mike!”

  He stayed on the high road. Not long afterward the polls began to turn against him so swiftly that there was hardly time to reposition himself. In the end Mike lost, but the voters were obviously disgusted with the campaign; it was the lowest turnout since 1924.

  I don’t know how much of an influence my opinion had, but it was certainly not helpful. In fact it was, as Mike and I later agreed, some of the worst advice I had ever given.

  WHAT I LEARNED

  What I should have added to the old Democratic congressional leader’s good line was “But when the jackass starts kicking down the barn, a good man should start kicking the jackass!”

  NANCY COYNE

  CEO, Serino Coyne Advertising

  Agency

  A pilot was flying from Los Angeles to Hawaii, and a visitor sitting in the cockpit—this was back in the “good old days”—was listening in on the communication from the tower.

  “Correct five degrees southwest.”

  A few minutes later: “Correct ten degrees northwest.”

  And then, “Correct ten degrees southeast.”

  “Aren’t you ever on course?” the visitor asked the pilot.

  “‘On course’ is just like life: a series of corrections,” the pilot replied.

  In hindsight, it’s hard to call anything a mistake inasmuch as the lessons learned from mistakes make them seem like necessary steps on the path to success. But certainly if I were to use my life as a road map to advise my daughter where the potholes were, I’d look at the decision I made to get married at twenty-one. I was still in college, and immediate gratification wasn’t fast enough. “Carpe diem” beat the hell out of “Good things come to those who wait.”

  As the marriage progressed—it lasted over twenty years—it became clear that certain fundamental differences between us would be our undoing. He was Catholic. I wasn’t much of anything. He was one of seven. I was an only child. He liked to hunt. The sight of a gun makes me crazy with loathing. He grew up in a town in South Dakota with plenty of bars and no bookstore. I grew up outside Washington, D.C., and did my homework in the Library of Congress. I am ambitious. He likes a good nap. As my career progressed, his stalled, and instead of trying harder, he expressed real satisfaction with the status quo.

  So when I finally left him, my decision cost me quite a lot. He got both homes and the contents, both cars, and all his guns, and I had to write a big check to boot. The case never went to a judge. I chose to give all that, as he could have asked for half of my business based on the longevity of the marriage.

  When the cashed check came back from the bank, for some reason I carried it around with me. I’d take it out and look at it in taxis or while waiting for a client to show up at lunch. I’d actually had to borrow the money to pay him off in one fell swoop, so at forty-five I was starting over, with debt, but also with a career that was flourishing. I often said that if my husband had told a judge, “I made her what she is today,” he wouldn’t have been lying. Having to pay all the bills for our life in New York, our nanny/housekeeper, our daughter’s private school, and our weekend place in Connecticut had been an incredible incentive. And make no mistake, my ex was not a househusband with dinner waiting when I got home.

  Soon, when the canceled check began to feel like something other than evidence of my early bad choices, it began to simply represent the price I paid for my freedom. It started to feel like proof of my value. After all, as my therapist asked, “Would you rather be the one who had to ask for a check or the one who could write it?” I came to love that canceled check. Because of my “mistake,” not a day goes by that I don’t feel like a million bucks.

  WHAT I LEARNED

  Character is a lot more important than chemistry. Character is much more likely to endure.

  MARTIN SHEEN

  Award-Winning Actor

  In the spring of 1988, I went to the United Farm Workers headquarters in Delano, California, with my son Emilio to support César Chávez in his fast for life. Although I had never met him, Chávez had been a great source of personal inspiration for me since he had cofounded the UFW union with Dolores Huerta in 1962.

  Hailed as one of the greatest Mexican American civil rights leaders, whose work led to numerous improvements for migrant farmworkers, Chávez had been inspired by the nonviolent examples of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. By organizing the workers and confronting the growers with boycotts, strikes, nonviolent protest, and long personal fasts, he achieved a level of justice with a measure of dignity for farmworkers unimaginable in the history of American agriculture.

  Now he had chosen to fast once again at great personal risk in order to draw public awareness to the indiscriminate use of deadly pesticides dumped on field crops with the residual effects of illness and sometimes even cancer among the field workers and their families.

  Events at Delano began in the afternoon with a news conference to identify the deadly pesticides at issue and announce the start of the “fast for life,” which aimed to help bring about an end to their use. In the evening a mass was celebrated at a makeshift altar in the union hall, followed by a rally attended by supporters and thousands of rank and file. This routine of mass and rally would last throughout the fast and in the weeks that followed. I returned every few days to participate in both. The mass was the only public event Chávez attended during the fast. Every evening, accompanied by his wife, Helen, and followed by other family members, friends, and union officials in a solemn procession, he walked from a small workers’ bungalow a few hundred yards to the hall. His arrival was greatly anticipated by a huge crowd inside the hall, who stood to greet him in profound silence as he made his entrance.

  On the afternoon of the twenty-third day of the fast for life, I arrived at Delano with my wife, Janet, and two old friends, Father Bill O’Donnell, who was also a close friend of Chávez’s, and Dr. Davida Coady. As we waited for the evening mass, Father Bill casually asked if we would like to meet Chávez. I was excited at the possibility, of course, but I had been given to believe that he was not receiving visitors during the fast. Father Bill thought an exception might be made if we were interested. Naturally, I said we’d be honored. With that, Father Bill went off to make the arrangements and returned in half an hour to announce that Chávez was waiting to receive us! I could barely contain my joy, but the anticipation of meeting my hero was overwhelming, and during the walk from the hall to the bungalow I lit a cigarette to calm my nerves. I had been a heavy smoker all of my adult life, and a cigarette had become a natural remedy for any stress. As we arrived at the bungalow, Fat
her Bill and Davida went in straightaway, but I lingered to finish my cigarette. “Put that out and come inside,” Janet commanded. “You go ahead, I’ll be right in,” I responded. Exasperated, she left me standing outside as I took a deep final puff, then flipped the cigarette away and went inside.

  The room was small and the light was low, but I could see Janet bending beside a single bed, where Chávez lay. He seemed much smaller than I had imagined as Janet kissed his hand and he kissed hers. Then I was called forward by Father Bill, who introduced me as Ramon Estevez, which is my real name. I knelt down in reverence to kiss his hand. He held on to mine and returned the gesture, kissing the very spot where I had just held the cigarette. I was humiliated, embarrassed, and deeply ashamed, because I knew for Chávez it was like kissing an ashtray, and in that instant I made a vow in the secret depths of my heart that I would stop smoking for as long as he fasted.

  Over the next two weeks, César’s health declined rapidly as he approached a point of no return. But as he grew weaker, public support for his cause grew stronger, culminating with the arrival at Delano of the Reverend Jesse Jackson, who proposed a form of compromise to help end the fast. His plan was inspired. César could end his fast if enough of his supporters would be willing to take it up by fasting three days each, then passing it on from one to another, thus making the fast indefinite. Also, the person who was fasting would wear one of the little crosses made from grapevines around his or her neck as a sign of solidarity and commitment.

  This proposal was greeted with overwhelming support and enthusiasm at the mass that evening, and the following day César ended the fast after thirty-six days. I joined the three-day fast and began my nonsmoking vow simultaneously, but when I reached the thirty-sixth day of not smoking, I decided to continue on in homage to César Chávez and I did not smoke again for fourteen years.