Encounter

While I was working as an editor at Fact magazine, in the 1960s, we hired a new receptionist. She wasn't pretty. But she had an astonishing sense of humor. Every time I passed by her desk and said something to her, she had a bright smile and a startlingly funny comment. I thought about her. I thought: I should tell her to become a comic writer, she was so remarkable. And I thought: I should invite her out to lunch.

But I was busy--and she left to work elsewhere.

She became a famous comedienne: Lily Tomlin.