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    So the year I won my Emmy for Best Supporting Actress was the one year when they didn't televise it. I mean, they didn't televise the Emmy show in the very beginning because they figured we were daytime, and well, who cared? But once they figured out that a lot of people did care, they started televising it. Except for the year I won.

I think what happened was, the show rotated between the three networks and that year the network which was supposed to host it wasn't nominated for anything, so they didn't want to promote the other soaps or something like that. Anyway, none of my loved ones saw my moment of triumph. So to speak.   

  This was partly because I'd been nominated twice before when I thought I had a stronger year so I figured no way I was going to get the thing this time. My husband stayed out in the country and went to his son's band concert. My mom stayed home and watched television -- not me, of course. I didn't even buy a new outfit. I had a silver mini dress that had belonged to my mother in law in the sixties and I wore it like a tunic over a pair of chiffon pants I picked up in a bargain basement somewhere on the Upper West Side. 

At the last second, as we walked into Radio City Music Hall, my agent -- she came with me because, well, that's what an agent does --  took off her earrings and handed them to me because I really did need a little glamming up. As I recall the producers of the show had a room in a hotel set aside for the nominees to primp and Lori Laughlin and her mother were there and I spilled Cover Girl Liquid Foundation down the front of my mother-in-law's tunic and Mrs. Lauglin mopped me up.    

I don't remember much about winning except that I sort of stumbled up to the stage and said into the mic, "Are you really sure about this?" I mean, there were some really good performances that year.    

 After the ceremony was over, all of the winners went into a room where the press was supposed to interview us but this was a year when Susan Lucci was nominated and it hadn't yet happened for her, so all the reporters were too busy stalking her and demanding to know how she felt. She was terribly gracious about it all, of course, but it did sort of put a damper on the moment for those of us who were clutching our statues and staring at each other. 

Then they took my Emmy away and sent it off to somewhere -- I think by pontoon boat -- to be engraved. Two weeks before it came back, I was fired from Ryan's Hope. When the Emmy showed up I really didn't want to look at it -- I figured it was cursed -- so I asked my agent to take custody for a while. She kept it in her office on top of her book shelf next to the window. It was a low book shelf, about three feet away from her desk and it was pretty crowded. It's really important for me to make that fact clear for the rest of this story --the Emmy was sitting with a bunch of other stuff on a book shelf near my agent's desk-- okay? Across the street they were engaging in a time honored New York tradition, they were knocking down one building to make way for another. A small wrecking ball overshot, or got turned around, or something, and flew through my agent's window, missed her, her desk, everything else on the book shelf, zoned in on my Emmy and creamed it. My agent gave it back to me really fast. 

I got it fixed, but I keep it in the original box in the furnace room next to the industrial sized bags of kitty littler. I take it out when I tour for my book, because people do like to see one up close. But it makes me kind of nervous -- you know?