Steve Lawrence & Me in The 1980s
The iconic musician/actor/comedian who got me fired and so much more
If you’re over fifty-five, you know who I mean. Or maybe I need to jog your memory. He was quite the singer, comedian, and actor, too, his career starting in the 1950s, when he was a mere 16. He had enormous stage presence. Could be seen often on The Carol Burnett Show — with and without his wife, Eydie Gorme, The Flip Wilson Show, “Murder She Wrote,” “The Blues Brothers,” and a few years before he died, “Two and a Half Men.” Starred in many a successful movie. He was an icon, for goodness sake. Best of all he was Jewish. He was Our Guy.
Anyway, this isn’t Steve’s story but mine.
Two years out of college, I was on my third office job, in the fundraising department at Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem.
Working in an office grated on my nerves and soul. I longed to be writing a novel say, or teaching Torah which I loved, but instead I had to make coffee for my imperious Czech boss. What was worse, I was no good at office work — the filing, working the phone with its complicated beeping red buttons, making plane reservations, keeping an office crisp and tidy? No.
