.… MEDCAT. The Bar. Driver’s license knowledge test. Jeez! It’s like prepping for an exam. But can you prep for death with twenty parlor game questions? … Twenty Questions. You remember— oh, of course not. Well before your time. Twenty Questions—a radio quiz show in the 1940s. Very popular. Sponsored by Ronson Lighters. Dumont TV ran it from ’51 to ’54. Wildroot Cream Oil.… Ronson? Dumont? Wildroot? Doesn’t matter. I used to be in advertising. The original “mad man,” you could say. Right, right, Mad Men.… Twenty Questions? What was Twenty Questions like? Oh, no, no, not like Mad Men at all. No double entendre. “Double entendre”? Doesn’t matter. Listeners sent in subjects that the panelists had to guess in twenty questions. That was it. No double entendre.… Yesterday, a kid, I used to listen—as the listener I used to listen, yesterday.… Hmm, funny, how life has a way of turning things around. Today I feel less a listener, more a panelist. Today.… Oh, this last one on your list is a doozy: “What will you most miss?” The very question Bill Slater would ask. Bill Slater? Doesn’t matter. If the panel guessed wrong the listener got a prize. A free magazine subscription or other. To Pageant, I believe it was. Pageant? Oh, Pageant was the poor man’s Reader’s Digest. Went under in ’77, Pageant did. Twenty Questions in ’54 or thereabouts.… Did I mention I was in advertising? … So, what’s the prize? cuz, y’see, I’ve got the answer to your number twenty. Ready? … “Nimrod.” Y’know, Enigma Variations? Elgar? Princess Di’s funeral? Right, right, that Princess Di … The one to be wanted.… to be touched … to be loved.… Right, right, now you got it, that “Nimrod.”…
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Vincent Barry …