Forgetting Something Important Poem by gershon hepner

Accepting an Emmy for being the best
leading actress Ms. J. Louis-Dreyfus
did not show much brilliance, but flunked the great test
for the course called Returning of Favors.
Someone she tried to remember––important
she called him, and then she forgot;
her husband it was, which is something one oughtn’t
to fail to recall, is it not?

Should ever I too win an Emmy equivalent
for great work I have done all my life,
I hope I won’t sound, as did Julia, ambivalent,
forgetting to mention my wife,
but if this should happen I do hope that she
will forgive me my memory lapse;
though I love her, I know that there’s no guarantee
that she will, but it’s likely––perhaps.

Lynn Smith writes in the LA Times about the memory lapse that befell Julia Louis-Dreyfus (Elaine in “Seinfeld”) at the Emmy Awards on August 27,2006:

The actress got laughs when, in midspeech, she tried to recall “someone very important who’s not on the list, and that’s going to come back to haunt me…” The camera showed husband Brad Hall. Then, after an offstage cue, she said, “My husband! ”



8/28/06