My dinner with Nixon

"Let's get his autograph!" Ellen cried. "C'mon, Perry let's go!"

"No, no, no, no!" I shot back. "He's a crook and cheat and we don't want or need his autograph!"

I was lying my ass off— not about Nixon, but about my reason for keeping said ass planted securely in my restaurant seat— specifically, my own gutlessness.

"Perry,” Ellen insisted, “he is a major world leader of the 20th Century!"

"Ellen, he's probably surrounded by secret service men. We'll be grabbed and whisked away for exhaustive interrogation by two sadistic cops straight out of central casting. Trust me; they won't let anyone get near him!"

I've used this excuse many times before, including the time I failed to pursue the autograph of Rupert G., the guy who runs the deli next to The David Letterman Show. But it seemed to mollify Ellen, who thereupon settled into her French onion soup and our dinner conversation, the former hopefully a bit warmer than the latter.

An hour and a half later as we received the check and Nixon and his entourage rose to leave, two sweet little blond girls, about four and six years old respectively, ran up to the former president and asked for his autograph.

They were not grabbed. They were not whisked away for exhaustive interrogation by two sadistic cops straight out of central casting. They didn't even look like Republicans.

Nixon flashed his jowly smile so broadly that it appeared he was about to shoot his arms into the air and make the patented victory sign so often dispensed during his presidency. He seemed truly delighted, almost as if he now felt vindicated at long last in the eyes of history, his fellow man, and the two little girls, for whom he graciously signed autographs. They beamed with happiness.

My dinner date was not beaming so happily.

"Well, Ellen," I stammered, "it ... uh ... looks like maybe we ...um .... did squander a bit of an opportunity here."

"That's not the only opportunity you've squandered here, jerk!" she said.