Oh My G-yod

Today is Christine Baranski's birthday. If Barbra's birthday is Easter/Yom Kipur and Christmas all rolled into one, Christine's birthday is more like the Feast of the Ascension; we happily acknowledge it, but we don't totally lose our shit over it.

Still, I figure this is a good time to tell the story about the day I met her. It was a grey and cloudy Veteran's Day in the late '90s. I was crossing Lexington Avenue at 74th Street (just a block away from where I ran into Carly Simon a few years earlier) with my late friend Mel. About halfway through the intersection she starts talking literally out of the side of her mouth.

"Theresmizzbarnsky."

"What?" I had no idea what she was saying.

"Theresmizzbaransky" she repeated.

"WHAT ARE YOU SAYING?" I snapped.

She pulled me close to her until her mouth was right up to my ear.

"There's Miss Baranski!" she over-enunciated into my ear.

"Oh my God, Oh My God."

"Be cool, be cool," Mel instructed me.

Five seconds later we were standing next to the Tony and Emmy winner waiting for the light to change. I wanted to say hello so badly, but I know the rules. I really did not want to bother her, so I stood there with all the impatience and strained self control my dog shows when I make him sit before giving him a treat. After about ten seconds I thought, "Isn't this light ever going to change?" I couldn't bear it any longer, and so without thinking I darted out into the crosswalk before the light changed.

Mel, who was clearly much calmer than I, literally grabbed me by the scuff of my neck and pulled me out of the path of an oncoming taxi, bouncing me back onto the sidewalk about two inches from Christine Baranski.

Fuck it.

"Well, I didn't want to bother you, but since I just almost got killed trying not to bother you, I might as well say hello."

"Oh my God," Christine Baranski said to me, but it was more like, "Oh my G-yod!"

She was very nice. We chatted for about a minute. I told her about the time I saw her at an AIDS benefit singing a number about how she lusted after Howdy Doody.

"Oh my G-yod! You saw THAT?!"

I told her I hoped she would come back to the theatre soon.

"I'm on my way to see a play right now!" she smiled and she quickly headed up Lexington Ave in her high-wasted tweed Katherine Hepburn pants.

She was funny, well dressed, and personable when she didn't have to me. Come to think of it, maybe her birthday is a day to totally lose my shit.