I have to say I was one of the lucky people who got to meet George Carlin. He had a habit of inviting a few people backstage at some of his shows. As luck would have it, the other two people couldn't stay long, so I had the MAN all to myself.

I first saw him on TV in the early '60's on Jack Paar, so I brought that up; comedy bits turned to politics and about an hour later, he said he had to run but would you like to come over to my place to "continue the repartee," as he put it.

I think I took two nanoseconds to respond, so my date and I climbed into his limo and we went to his townhouse. His "filing system" was well-known back as far as the late '60s when he broke out of his lounge lizard persona into the hip one. He graciously showed it to me and asked if I'd like to "add to it."

I had had a couple of scotches - neat - by then, so I didn't respond right away, but when the bulb came on, I told him I had a premise for a joke he could use. One thing that caught his ear was that I was a closet linguist and etymologist, so we bandied words back and forth. That was his catnip, so to speak.

I don't know if my joke made it into his "pantheon of lexicon," as he liked to call it, but gourd knows I spent the next 10 or 12 years prior to his death trying to find out.