Doris Roberts Belongs to Me

I own Doris Roberts. You might say she’s my bitch. Most people don’t know that I own her, including Miss Roberts herself.

Let me explain.

Two summers ago my squeeze decided to rent a beach house in May on Pawleys Island, South Carolina, for a week. Pawleys Island isn’t really a very large place, perhaps five miles long and two or three miles wide. Half of the island faces the Atlantic and the other side faces a salt flat. The beach houses there are nothing particularly luxurious, but because of the location and the panache, when they sell, it’s for a million dollars and up. Pawleys visitors are mostly renters, and the clientele are often among the society’s most chichi. It is Pawleys, too, that is famous for its rope hammocks which admittedly are very comfortable.

Surprisingly, there really isn’t much in the way of tourist spots or souvenir shops in the small communities on the mainland across from Pawleys. There are a few average bars, and a couple of unremarkable restaurants nearby. Nonetheless, my significant other had decided to check out the small hammock store near Pawleys while I circled the block in the rental car (parking was a problem). On about the fifth pass, I had turned onto the main drag that passed near the hammock shop and saw my girlfriend, her mother, and an old woman standing at the curb. Incredibly, the old woman, without looking, stepped in front of my car and I had to stomp the brake pedal for dear life so as not to hit her. Her guardian angel must have been with her because the old woman just missed becoming a hood ornament on my rental.

As my squeeze and her mom climbed into the car she asked “Do you know who that was?”

“Yeah! Some crazy old woman,” I replied, “who nearly got dead.”

“That was Doris Roberts!”

“Who the hell is Doris Roberts?”

I’ve subsequently found that she is a fairly well known star of sit-coms. I’ve seen her on the TV on several occasions since. And every time I do, I say to myself “Doris Roberts, you belong to me!”