Our culture has become so celebrity-driven. I’ve never been the kind of person to seek autographs or try to mingle with celebrities. There aren’t a lot of people I would cross the street to meet. Come to think of it, the famous people I would most like to meet are dead now. You could say I’m downright unsociable. But I’m still interested to hear how ordinary people’s lives intersect, however tangetially, with the rich and famous.

These are my own brushes with fame. They are pretty meager and mostly dating from the 80s. Apparently moving to Vermont doesn’t get you in the way of celebrities much:

Dr. Ruth attended my sister’s wedding as the guest of someone we actually knew. She was more or less at the peak of her fame at the time. Somehow she got seated at the table with the Christian Scientists. I think they had a good time.

Alan Bond, the owner of the ship that won the America’s Cup in 1983, bought champagne for me and a friend in a bar in Geneva, Switzerland.

I saw the actors Bryan Brown and Rachel Ward on the sidewalk in front of the Flower Clock (also in Geneva). They were hugging so I stepped around them. I figured out a few years later that they must have been there for the filming of the final scene in the movie F/X.

Bob Dole invited me for a ride in his limousine in 1991 after a “meet and greet” event in New Hampshire. I was so taken aback, I said no. I may have visibly blanched.

I was standing on the corner of 5th Avenue across from the Plaza Hotel when I noticed the comedian, Richard Lewis, standing beside me. I was going through a phase of dressing completely in black and so, apparently, was he.

This is a brush with pre-fame. I went to high school with Keith Lockhart, the conductor of the Boston Pops. He directed the pit orchestra of our spring musical, “The Pajama Game”. I played piano. Already a talented musician himself, he didn’t rate my skills very highly. As he signed in my yearbook … “What would I have done in pit orchestra without you? Probably a lot better.”