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really hit bottom. It's almost Christmas and we're forgetting one of the profund truths He left us — that suffering is ennobling, that He who would save his life must first lose it. Do you see that picture of Frank Sinatra on page 45?"
I turned to page 45. The year was 1951. The picture was a pitiful one, of a shell of a man walking along a desolate beach in autumn, his trousers rolled up, his head hanging down wearily as a flower at the end of autumn hangs its head on a thin dry stem.
"How does he look?" asked my Head.
"Awful," I had to admit.
"Weight: 112. Identifying marks: razor scars on wrist. Marital status: lousy. Mental attitude: extremely lousy. Career: a total washout. Future?"
"Absolutely, positively brilliant," I answered. "But if you're trying to tell me that Frank Sinatra suddenly became a great actor and a great singer because he had fallen so low, well. . . ."
"What's the matter with you?" said a strangely familiar, high-pitched voice, and I looked up to see my wife standing on the cellar stairs, staring at me incredulously and scratching her head.
"Do you know why your head itches?" I said.
"Now I know you're crazy. Do you realize I've been standing here for ten minutes and all you've been doing is mumbling to yourself? As a matter of fact, what have you been doing?"
"It so happens," I smiled, "that I've been making a study of life in Hollywood in the 1950's, so that the next time you start in with one of your ridiculous quizzes you won't be dealing with any lunkhead — at least in that category. Go on," I said, "ask me a question. Anything."
I knew I had her then. Her frown disappeared, that well-known madness lit up her eyes gaily, she came down the steps and, using an old broom for a microphone, said, "Your first question is state the important events in Hollywood by years, beginning with the year 1950. You have exactly six minutes."
Well, with an unorganized bean like mine that couldn't even remember when Debbie married Eddie, I knew she'd stumped me again. Then suddenly I realized that in the inside pocket of my jacket was a carbon copy of an excellent, informed article Louella Parsons had just written for Modern Screens Hollywood Yearbook, in which Louella had, among the many interesting things she had to say, listed the important events of the Fifties year by year. A wild thought came upon me. "It just so happens," I lied, that I knew you were going to ask that question and so, for the sake of time, I've written down my answers." At which point I took out the article, moved back aways so she could not see that it was a typed carbon, and coolly began to shoot the answers to her.