My friend Rusty Cawley was amazed that I recognized author Michael Lewis on the street the other day.  He asked me how that was possible.  Here’s my reply:

Rusty, to properly answer this I have to mention my Theory of Special Powers.  Everyone you know who’s worth anything has Special Powers in some area.  My sister Donna has Special Organizing Powers, for example (she could have straightened out the mess in Iraq).  Your own mother has the Special I’m Always Sweet and Fabulous Power.  Remember James Boedecker?  He had the Special I Was Born With This Ridiculous Physique Power.

I have several Special Powers, and one of them is Remembering and Recognizing Show business People.  I have a casting director’s memory.  In fact, casting directors think I should BE a casting director.

Also, I’ve been a bookwork since second grade.  And I am a lifelong Lazy Writer.  So I have the Lazy Writer’s worship of people who can actually put down the donut/PS3 controller/Kindle long enough to actually write something and finish it and get it published.

I LOVE my writers.  I’ve written to many of them over the years, and they ALWAYS write back.  I have received letters from Garry Trudeau, Charles Schulz, Ray Bradbury, Stephen King, Isaac Asimov – and all of those were before email.  I watch interviews with them.  I read about them.  I read their blogs.  I go meet them and hear them speak at Book Festivals.

So I remember writer’s faces.  Also, it doesn’t hurt if they are handsome, like Michael Lewis.

Of course, handsome isn’t a requirement.  I’d instantly recognize Joyce Carrol Oates, and we all know she looks like an “After” photo of a certain diminutive fisherman named Sméagol.

So this Special Power of mine acts like an antenna that’s always powered up.  So I notice things like, Hey, that’s Edward Albee I his running shorts on the elevator with me.  Or, hey, that’s Alex Rocco from The Godfather on the elevator with me.  Or I meet Gore Vidal in a porn shop in West Hollywood.  Or, Hi, aren’t you Octavia Butler perusing the stacks at the library next to me?  Or, look, I’m holding the door at Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf for Oscar Winner Linda Hunt.  It happens to me all the time.

I have no doubt that I would instantly recognize Terry Pratchett, Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, George R. R. Martin, John Scalzi, Michael Connelly, or John Irving.

I’m sure you have Special Powers, too, Rusty.  What are they?