Where do I go from here?

Hindsight is always 20/20. If I'd understood more about loss and grief I might have done things differently. Losing two thirds of my family in such traumatic, dramatic ways over such a short period of time had a devastating affect on me. Yet on a day to day basis I functioned quite normally. I went to work, I spent time with friends and my relationship with Bruce moved forward.

A few months after my brother died, following Bruce's proclamation that "we have a future", we decided it was time to let my bosses know about the relationship. Bruce was Executive Producer of Name that Tune and I was one of the censors assigned to work on the show to ensure it wasn't rigged. Our relationship could have been construed as a "conflict of interest" and one of my bosses was the inventor of term "conspiracy theory". He was the former FBI agent I told you about earlier, and felt every issue concerning honesty on NBC was as important as national security. Allan took things very, very seriously.

Each season, prior to the first taping, there would be a "song" meeting at Ralph Edwards' house. Ralph Edwards had created a show called "It's Your Life" and from there went on to be uber successful in the early days of television. He owned a production company, Ralph Edwards' Productions and Bruce was the head of it at the time. Name That Tune was one of their shows.

Here is an, I swear it's true, example of Allan's serious nature when it came to his work. Before the beginning of the season there would be a "song" meeting. The producers, Ralph Edwards and several senior members of Compliance and Practices would select the songs/sheet music for the $100,000 competition at the end of the show, if a contestant had qualified for it. The sheet music needed to be put into agreed upon categories - "easy" "medium" and "difficult"- and were then locked away for use during the season. This would ensure if a contestant was going for the $100,000 no switches could be made. The producers were allowed to determine whether or not the song would be "easy" "medium" or "difficult" based upon how much money they had given away during the season .

So, that meant the songs had all been pre-chosen as to their degree of difficulty and the song to be used that taping would be randomly selected by a member of the C&P department just before the final segment of the show was taped. When the song was chosen the piano player would practice the notes from the selected sheet music, while a C&P person was be sequestered with the contestant to make sure they didn't hear the music. No one would have access to the songs after the meeting. Seriously, they were locked in a safe. Seriously.

At this meeting the music sheets were laid out on the floor of Ralph Edward's den. As you would imagine this was a large house on a large piece of property. The music sheets were being placed into three piles, "easy", "medium" and "difficult". Suddenly, Allan jumped up, yelled "watch out" and threw himself on top of the piles, scattering the sheets everywhere. The other people in the room looked at him questioningly as if he'd lost his mind. It was actually kind of the way people looked at Allan a lot.

"Look, there's a gardener outside the window", Allan responded, flailing around on the floor, with sheets of music scattered all around him.

"Allan", Ralph replied, "he's least fifty feet away, he's mowing the lawn and he doesn't have ex-ray vision."

It really happened...seriously. So, it seemed prudent to let him know I was now dating the Executive Producer of the show. It was determined I wouldn't work on Name That Tune again and the woman who did the scheduling wasn't happy about it. "Tune" was a long day. We met the contestants when they first arrived and went on field trips to make certain there was no way they could hear the band rehearsing the music. After taping five shows it was normally a twelve hour day. Most of us in the department loved working on "Tune" but we didn't get paid overtime so it was a labor of love.

The woman who did the scheduling had a pernicious personality. With no discernible cause you would find yourself working the graveyard shows and turning around to a really early morning call the next day. Midnight Special always ended taping around 11:00PM. Wheel of Fortune had their contestants arrive at the studio at 8:00AM. Get the picture? Since she'd gone out with Bruce a couple of times and had just broken up with her boyfriend, I had quickly gone to the top of her shit list.

My short fuse was shorter than ever so I would call her on the inequities of my schedule. Her excuse was, "Well, you can't work Tune so this is the best I can do." Since Bruce had to be at all the Tune tapings it seemed she went out of her way to make certain our schedules were quite conflicted. Clever girl!

It almost worked!