We met a year ago today. I was supposed to see Sondheim on Sondheim for his 80th birthday celebration with a friend. She was supposed to do an informal reading of an evening of one-acts. But another friend asked me to be in a reading of his short plays that night and she was given a last-minute ticket to see Sondheim on Sondheim.

So I didn't see Sondheim and she didn't do that reading. We met anyway because Ringling Bros was running the elephants at midnight across 34th Street from the Queens Midtown Tunnel, the only way to get them to Madison Square Garden. She came down from 54th Street to meet her friends from the reading. I said something aloud about her having a beautiful voice when she walked away at one point. Her friend told her what I said and she stared at me the rest of the night. I thought, “she must think I'm weird.”

We didn't say one word to one another.

I took a few cruddy pictures of the night on my Blackberry, including this blur of the elephants running by at what seemed to be more than 10 mph. I asked my friend to tag the pics on Facebook. He only tagged Aimee. She friended me. I wrote a thank you.

Mr. Sondheim is 81 today. The Ringling elephants are at Nassau Coliseum this week while MSG is being renovated. Aimee and I are involved with 2 different staged readings tonight but I'm confident we'll see each other anyway near 34th Street before midnight.