On a wish and a dare...

HALLIE: I know Rosemary is going to beat us all to smithereens with this question, but what’s the most daring (or foolhardy) thing you’ve ever done? And getting married doesn’t count.

I am one of the most careful people I know. Even after I moved to New York, it was months before I could make myself cross the street on a red light. My nightmares as a kid involved being in the school hallway without a pass.

One of the dumbest things I ever did was hitch a ride home from with my best friend Carlynne Lampert (where are you, Carlynne?). We were maybe fifteen years old, and about a mile from home when we stuck out our thumbs. The car that stopped was a white Ford Fairlane with a Spanish-speaking family of four in it. We squeezed in and they dropped us four blocks from Carlynne’s house. The mother lectured us in Spanish before dropping us off.

“Nothing happened,” I later insisted to my mother. What were we thinking? It was just our lucky day that nothing did.

JAN: The foolhardy list is endless. Especially in my teenage years when it was a miracle that I wasn't the next Karen Ann Quinlan. I also hitchhiked, not just for transportation, but for sport.

But in terms of daring, where I actually THOUGHT about what I was about to do, there are two: Singing solo at the annual Follies production (a spoof of the news.)in front of one thousand people.The second is jumping off the bridge on Martha's Vineyard into the ocean on state beach. (remember the Jaws movie?) If you go there, you'll see a zillion kids doing this, but I am severely acrophobic, so this meant wrestling my biggest fear down to the ground.

RO: Jan's thrown down the gauntlet and now the pressure is on..
I'm tempted to say the most foolhardy/daring thing I've ever done is to send my book to an agent, but I don't think that's what Jan's looking for. In retrospect some of my African adventures have been...adventures. I did get frostbite climbing Kili, I did briefly take the controls of a small plane flying from Nairobi to Arusha. I/we did roll into a Tanzanian town after dark with no place to stay. But none of those things felt daring at the time.

OK, I got it...Bruce and I were in Zihuatenajo (I have a thing for Shawshank Redemption.) I think we were actually on the beach where Andy and Red meet at the end of the movie (Barra de Potosi?)and we had a few beers with this local guy who seemed very friendly. We told him the next day we were heading north to Michoacan to see the butterfly migration but connections were difficult. He offered to drive us - a short cut (!) and we said yes. It was eight hours of bad road and I bumped around in the back of a tiny rustbucket that had to be 20 yrs old. Pretty stupid..I don't know what we were thinking. He could have killed us and they never would have found our bodies.

ROBERTA: okay, if getting married to a guy with two kids doesn't count as daring/foolhardy, I don't know what does! But I'll play...after college, I decided I needed to really leave home. So I loaded up my Chevy Vega with a tent, a Coleman stove, a hatchet, and my clothes and set out for Boulder from New Jersey with a girlfriend. (Actually the hatchet was a gift from my dad at the last minute--can you imagine how much he loved this plan??) Along the way, my friend decided she was going to marry her high school sweetheart. Although she wanted to stay with me until I was settled, I was too pissed to take her up on that offer. And not so crazy about Colorado--too far from the ocean and the mountains felt claustrophobic. So I drove to California by myself, found a campground in Santa Barbara, and lived in my tent until I found a roommate and a waitressing job. Whew, I wouldn't do that today!

HANK: So, Rosemary, did you see the butterflies? Let's see. I hitchhiked from Oxford, Ohio to Cincinnati to hand out campaign info for George McGovern. My college roommate and I were picked up by a nice man who looked like someone's father--he yelled at us all the way to Cincy about how stupid we were and gave us bus fare to get back to school.

And it wasn't on purpose, but I was flying in a tiny plane from Boston to Vermont to cover a story on some alleged cult that was abusing their cult children. We were going to touch down, meet a local videographer, run to the court, get the story, leap back into the plane and get to Boston in time for the 6pm news.

It was a beautiful sunny day, and so much fun to fly. SO I was looking out the window, watching the ground below, and feeling kind of glamorous.

Until I looked over at the pilot. And realized he was FALLING ASLEEP. I mean, his eyes were closed. CLOSED.

Me. And a sleeping pilot.

I have never talked so much and so animatedly in my LIFE. It was like Scheherezade, keeping the guy interested. To keep myself alive.

I also sang the entire song White Rabbit, (pulling out all the stops, and with new lyrics I had written for the occasion) with a whole band in front of a pretty big crowd. I literaly almost fainted afterwards when my adrenaline plummeted or something.

HALLIE: I knew you guys would show me up to be the piker that I am in the daring-do department. Jan and Hank, next time we get togehter you guys are singing a duet of White Rabbit.