So Wild Blue is fabulous. If you happen to be in the vicinity of swanky Dayton, Ohio, arts capital of Montgomery County, I highly recommend it. It’s running for the next three weeks. The show was reviewed in the local paper by an idiot whose chief complaint was that there was not a list of songs in the program. And . . . surprise . . . know what? There is a list of songs in the program, so apparently it’s perfect after all. I could have told him that.

Last night, before the show, we all got to meet a W.A.S.P. Not a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant, which are a dime a dozen around here, but a Women’s Airforce Service Pilot, which are not. These are women who volunteered during World War II to ferry planes around and do a great deal of other work for which they received essentially no recognition. Since there’s a sequence in Wild Blue about the W.A.S.P.s, Rob and his collaborators were full of questions for this octogenarian, and I tried to stay out of their way. Later, she said to me (somewhat waspishly, I thought), “Well, it was nice to meet you, but what did you do for the show? Stand around doing nothing?” The director, who was standing next to me, winced at this and said, “He gave us a lot of emotional support.”

That made me feel good, although it’s hardly something that will turn up in a review.

Well, maybe one day, in my obituary. Or in someone's Tony Award acceptance speech.

The funniest part was how we all deified this woman before she arrived, and she turned out to be fairly ordinary. I get the idea that one day, sixty years from now, I'll be much sought-out for stories on my early years with a famous Broadway composer. I’ll especially enjoy regaling my audience with swashbuckling tales of how I stood around doing nothing.