Revelations

Have I ever told you about the time I met Jack Lambert?

Summer 1998. One of the most influencial summers of my life, though I didn’t know it at the time. I was 14 years old, failing miserably at my very first attempt at a long distance relationship but succeeding at writing short fiction. Adam Penenberg had just busted Stephen Glass in one of the most interesting cases of journalistic fraud I’ve ever encountered, and I trekked down three blocks every morning to the 7-11 to pick up the latest copy of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette to follow the story’s progression, as I wanted to be a highly respected journalist one day. Penenberg was my hero, not just because he maintained the same code of journalistic ethics and integrity that I aspired to and was ballsy enough to call journalism’s golden boy onto the carpet, but because that same golden boy’s word was taken by my then-stepfather as gospel. He actually started concocting half-brained business schemes on how to make a quick buck off the technology Glass made up, so it gave me more than a small bit of satisfaction to see them fall (especially as I was told the reason I couldn’t understand how these latest ‘innovations’ worked as Glass described was because I was a girl and therefore naturally inferior to the male intellect). Penenberg’s path would cross mine again later while I was at Penn State, when he came to visit mutual friend Bud Boman (go figure) and we both ended up in a group doing lunch together. We were halfway through lunch before I realized (to my shock and awe) who it was I was talking to. But I digress.

My other passion was football. Steve Young was number one on my list of people I wanted to meet, and I was starting to think that maybe I should combine my love of the NFL with my love of writing and just be a sports journalist, but a good one, not like the female sports journalists I was seeing on TV who’d wear these ridiculous outfits down on the football field and ask questions in their interviews about what players thought of their new uniforms (I’m not kidding, I saw it happen. “This is why women should stay reporting kitchen recipes and out of men’s sports,” the stepfather would say). For the time being, I was honing my writing skills, because while I was pretty good, I was untrained as a writer and knew talent could only take you so far. I never went anywhere without a pen and a notepad, so I could jot down ideas as they came to me- story ideas, descriptions of things that caught my eye, fragments of dialogue (overheard and imagined–these were the origins of my Quotes of the Day).

So on a bright summer morning my sister had an appointment to get her hair permed in Kittaning. My mother was working that day, so my stepfather (in a rather rare instance of usefulness) offered to take her, and he, Lisa, my brother and I headed out. While the hairdressers prepped my sister’s hair, I settled in the waiting area with a Sports Illustrated. I remember my brother pacing the waiting area and my stepfather continually coming in to bug me and going out to walk about outside. We’d been there about fifteen minutes when in the door came this huge guy, and I’m not talking fat– this guy was tall, broad shouldered, and his biceps were as big around as I was. I remember I was reading the pre-season football predictions at the time and thinking he’d make a good linebacker (no, I’m not kidding there). As he went up to the counter, my stepfather came over to me and hissed “Do you KNOW who that IS???” I shook my head no, at which point he let out an exasperated sigh. “Of course you don’t. It’s only the greatest linebacker to ever play the GAME! That’s JACK LAMBERT!”

“Oh,” I said, returning to my magazine.

“Oh?” he whispered incredulously. “OH?! You’re sitting in the presence of football greatness, and all you can say is OH?!”

“Well, being famous and all, I’m sure he’s used to people fawning over him all the time, and I’m sure it gets annoying. Let the guy get his hair cut in peace.”

I won’t mention his reply, save to say it consisted of his opinion on the idea of my “so-called journalism”, and he sulked off to the other side of the room to plot what he was going to say to Jack Lambert.

I tried not to notice when of all the empty seats in the room, he picked one a few seats down from my own, then a few moments later moved up so he was two seats away. He waited another moment before clearing his throat, “Excuse me?”

I looked up in surprise.

“Are you finished with this one?” he asked, gesturing to the magazine on the seat between us.

“Be my guest, ” I replied, smiling as he thanked me with a politeness I hadn’t expected from someone who made a career of pummelling people into the ground.

“So, you like football?”

I grinned and nodded.

“Steelers fan?”

“Niners, actually,” I said, squirming a little.

Now it was his turn to grin. “Niners are a good team. Just so long as it’s not the Cowboys.”

“That would be my little brother, Mr. Lambert, sir.”

He grimaced, thinking for a moment. “Well, nobody’s perfect.” He raised an eyebrow in Steve’s direction (which I’m sure scared my brother half to death), then chuckled and extended his hand. “And it’s Jack, by the way.”

“Jen,” I smiled as I shook his mammoth paw with my tiny one.

I wish I could remember more of the specifics of our conversation after that. I remember talking about free agency and howthere was no team loyalty anymore, players just whining about how they only get four million a season to play rather than the five or six million they wanted, and thinking it was extremely cool that a Hall of Fame player was sitting next to me saying I was right on. I told him about the Stephen Glass case. I remember talking about how I wanted to be a writer, but I couldn’t decide if I wanted to write books or be a sports writer, and I remember him telling me there was no reason I couldn’t do both (which made me feel pretty damned good). I showed him my little notepad, which is significant in that even now I don’t often share my notes with anyone. I remember he asked me what my last name was, and I told him and asked why. “So when you become a big writer, I can get your books and tell people I knew you back when you first started.” It was, up to that point in my life, the best compliment I’d ever received. I remember after he got up when the lady called she was ready to cut his hair, my stepfather came over all shocked and amazed because Jack Lambert had come over to talk to ME.

“Mmm-hmmm,” I replied, going back to my magazine.

“So…what did you talk about?”

I closed the magazine on my lap and looked at him. “Stuff.”

My brother got his autograph before he left (even though he was wearing a Cowboys t-shirt), and my stepfather made a social ass of himself yet again trying to get Jack to remember some advertising campaign in a short-lived magazine he’d worked on in the early nineties. I felt bad about the latter part, especially as it was pretty clear to everyone except my stepfather that Jack had no friggin clue as to what he was talking about but was pretending to in order to get the stories over with sooner. Fortunately, one of the nice things about being famous is it’s always assumed you have somewhere to be, so Jack made his escape, but before he did, he gave me one last piece of advice: Don’t stop writing.

That’s advice I’ve neglected for a while, and something I plan to remedy. It was reiterated by Mr. Penenberg five years later and by Scott not too long ago. But dear readers, after a long drought, I’ve found a muse again.

Let the downpour begin.