![]() Someone asked her what she was going to be speaking about on the show. Of course, when she was fifteen she was busy with field hockey and cheerleading and plays-not to mention with trying to hold her family together three years earlier her father had walked out into the night, never to return. ![]() Her eyes firmly shut, and clutching the edges of the makeup chair like an astronaut re-entering the atmosphere, she asked the makeup artist to teach her how to apply eyeliner-something that, she admitted, was among many things she should have learned when she was fifteen. The CNN anchors Bill Hemmer and Soledad O'Brien were there taping their show, American Morning, which on this morning would feature an interview with the author of "Ask Amy." Dickinson tracked down a producer, who ushered her to makeup. Hell, Dickinson wrote, "that horse has left the barn." In response to "Perfect Wedding in Arizona," who was not on speaking terms with most of her family, Dickinson sidestepped an etiquette question about whether Perfect should be forced to invite people she didn't want to and pointed out bluntly that not speaking to whole groups of her kin was a sign that she didn't "'do' family well." Phillips, meanwhile, fielded a question about how many days' notice a family member should give before a visit, and let a reader from Georgia share a random act of kindness she had benefited from.Īfter concluding that she had bested Phillips that morning, Dickinson and I wandered into the main hall of the Field Museum. She consoled the mother of an unwed pregnant eighteen-year-old, telling her it was all right to throw the girl a baby shower. On this day Dickinson told a middle-aged married woman that it's okay to have crushes on other men-"enjoy but don't indulge"-and admitted to having had a dream ("it wasn't a sex dream") about Dr. Today she read her own column first ("just to make sure we're still in business, if you know what I mean"), and then flipped to the back of the Tribune to read "Dear Abby," the column of her nearest rival (which is written by Jeanne Phillips, who happens to be the daughter of Eppie Lederer's twin sister, Popo Phillips, its original author).įor two columnists plying the same trade, Dickinson and Phillips could hardly be more different. Dickinson became the author of the column "Ask Amy" in July of 2003, when the Tribune gave her the newsprint real estate that had long belonged to Eppie Lederer, known to Western civilization as Ann Landers. It may have been too early in the day for Dickinson to be sifting through her readers' questions, but it was not too early to check out her competition. They would wonder if they should tell their spouses about that fleeting infidelity at a motel near the Minneapolis airport fifteen years before. Because inside their too small apartments or too large colonials people would begin to question their motivations for staying with one another, or to suspect that their adoptive fathers never gave a damn, or to yearn for reunion with their estranged children, long-lost lovers, alienated friends. And this would be the time when Chicago-and other places all across the country-would really need Amy Dickinson. Soon the city's harsh winds and early sunsets would drive everyone indoors, away from dinner parties and scheduled drinks-away from one another, really, and into near hibernation. But the pleasant feelings they induced would not last. A few days later Northwestern would upset Purdue in Evanston at homecoming. Late the night before, reporters at the rival Chicago Sun-Times had come to terms with management just in time to avert an expected strike. Dickinson, an attractive forty-five-year-old woman-she somehow looks like a combination of Mary Tyler Moore and Pat Benatar-was sitting on the top step of Chicago's Field Museum, reading the paper, her paper, the Chicago Tribune. on a bright, temperate day in late October. It was still early in the morning-a few minutes before 8:00 A.M. ![]() But that's only because she hadn't made it to her office yet. No "I slept with my ex-boyfriend two days before his wedding-what should I do?" No "Should I leave my wife for my high school sweetheart?" Not even an inquiry about whether it's appropriate to breast-feed during a cocktail party. When I first met her, there were no questions for Amy Dickinson.
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