He Could've Been Morley Safer Jr.

Morley Safer

Lou Rossman was one of those people who never took responsibility for where they are in life.

He always saw himself as a victim of circumstances, as a person who never got the same breaks that successful people got. In his mind, he was a bastion of unfulfilled potential.

This may explain why, at age 38, he still lived at home with his parents while working as an overnight grocery stocker in the cereal aisle at the local Walmart.

“What am I doing here?” he would ask himself as he put boxes of Coco Puffs and bottles of Log Cabin maple syrup on the shelves. “I should be so much more successful. I just need a couple of breaks to go my way.”
 

One Sunday night while watching “60 Minutes” with his parents, a segment came on with long-time CBS newsman Morley Safer.

“Oh, Morley Safer,” his mother Clara said casually. “Did I ever tell you I used to know him?”

“You knew Morley Safer?” Lou asked.

“I met him many years ago when I lived in New York City. We actually dated for a while.”

“You dated Morley Safer?”

“Of course, he wasn’t a big deal like he is now.”

“So what happened?”

“He was very nice but it didn’t go anywhere. There was no chemistry. I prefer the David Brinkley type, but I never got to meet him.”

Lou got out of his chair and looked at his mother. Then he looked across the room at his father, Lou Sr., wearing a Speedo and a three-day growth of beard while he dozed off in his recliner.

He looked back at his mother. “You mean you dated Morley Safer? You could’ve married Morley Safer?”

“Well, it never really got close to marriage.”

By this time it didn’t matter whether his mother said “Well, it never really got close to marriage,” or “I saw three Martians eating pineapple in the backyard this afternoon,” Lou’s mind was well on its way to an unhealthy conclusion.

“Do you know what that means?” he asked.

“What?” Clara said.

“That means I could’ve been Morley Safer Jr. If you would have just played your cards right I could’ve been Morley Safer Jr.”

“Oh, that’s ridiculous.”

"Ridiculous? Ridiculous? No, here’s what’s ridiculous,” Lou said, his voice rising. “I’m probably going to spend the rest of my life stocking cereal at Walmart when I could have it made. Instead of being Lou Rossman Jr., a loser from a family of losers, I could’ve been Morley Safer Jr. I could be living on easy street right now.”

“Well, first of all, you aren’t going to spend of the rest of your life stocking cereal. I’m sure someday they’ll let you have a better job, like in produce or sporting goods. Look how far you’ve come. You used to just collect shopping carts in the parking lot.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

“I don’t know what else to say.”

“What was the problem? Was it sex? Wouldn’t you have sex with him?”

Clara stood up. She was angry. “Louis Rossman Jr. that will be quite enough.”

With that she left the room. Lou sat back down. The more he thought about it the madder he got. He got up out of his chair, went to the doorway and shouted down the hall.

“If you couldn’t marry him couldn’t you at least have had a torrid love affair with him and end up bearing his child. I could live with being illegitimate. You know, it’s a lot more accepted nowadays.”

“Will you shut up,” his mother shouted back down the hallway.

Lou slumped back in his chair. He heard his father awakening across the room.

“Hey, Morley Safer,” Lou Sr. said as he looked at the TV. “I always liked him.”

“I could’ve been Morley Safer Jr.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Never mind.”

“That’s a funny name, Morley,” Lou Sr. said. “I wonder what it’s short for. Maybe Mortimer.”

Lou looked incredulity at his father.  “What are you talking about?  Mortimer? Mort is short for Mortimer, not Morley.”

“It  has to be short for something?”

“It’s not short for anything. His name is Morley. That’s his name.”

Lou Sr. rolled onto his side. He was ready to doze off again. “Well, it’s a funny name in my book.”

In the weeks and months that followed Lou obsessed over the fact that, in his mind, he could have been Morley Safer Jr. It seemed to affect every aspect of his life.

During a job interview, when the interviewer said “Looking at your resume, your experience doesn’t seem to be a match with the position we’re looking to fill,” Lou replied, “I guess you could say that, but I think there’s one thing you need to know.”

“What’s that?” the interviewer asked.

“I could’ve been Morley Safer Jr.”

He didn’t get the job.

Women also didn’t seem to be impressed.

“No, I won’t go out with you,” an attractive blonde told him one night when he approached her at a local tavern. “You’re not my type.”

“Oh really,” Lou said to her. “Well here’s a little something that may just change your mind: I could’ve been Morley Safer Jr.”

“Who’s Morley Safer?” she asked.

You could see how this one was going to end up.

Once when he was stopped for speeding, Lou took this unsuccessful approach:

“Officer, I think you should know something before you write that ticket.”

“What’s that?” the policeman asked.

“I could’ve been Morley Safer Jr.”

“Your license says you’re Louis Rossman Jr.”

“I am Louis Rossman Jr., but I could’ve been Morley Safer Jr.”

“You don’t say, Here’s your ticket. Have a nice day.”

Lou just couldn’t shake the unsettling thought that he just missed being born into a life of fame and fortune. Then one day he read that Morley Safer was coming to town. He was going to appear for a book signing at the local Barnes and Noble for his autobiography: “The Morley Safer Story.”

He decided this was his chance to confront his demons. He headed to the bookstore and got in the line of people waiting for Morley Safer’s autograph.

“What are you doing?” the store manager asked

.

“I’m here to see Morley Safer.”

“Where’s your book?”

“What book?”

“Morley Safer’s autobiography – ‘The Morley Safer Story.’ You have to have a copy of his book.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s a book signing. You can’t stand in line to have your book signed if you don’t have a book.”

“But I just want to talk to him.”

“This isn’t a talk line. It’s a book signing line. Now you have to buy a book or you have to leave.”

“How much is the book?”

“$24.95.”

“$24.95?”

“Plus tax.”

“For crying out loud …”

“No book, no standing in line.”

Lou trudged away in disgust, bought the book and got back in line. Eventually it was his turn.

“Who should I make it out to,” Morley Safer asked, barely looking up at Lou.

“We’ll, you could make it out to Lou Rossman Jr. …”

He began to write in the book.

“…or you could make it out to who you should rightfully make it out to – Morley Safer Jr.”

Morley Safer looked up.

"What are you talking about?”

“You know what I’m talking about, the former Clara Dickson, New York City, ring a bell?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t give me that line of bull Mr. 60 Minutes. You know it and I know it. I could’ve been Morley Safer Jr.”

Morley Safer looked toward the manager. “Could security get this guy out of here?” he asked.

 

A burly security guard came over, grabbed Lou by the arm and pulled him away.

“Get your hands off me,” Lou yelled as he was dragged away. “Do you know who you’re dealing with? I’ll tell you. No, better yet, just ask him.”

He looked back at Morley Safer.

“Go ahead. Ask him. Ask him.”

The security guard continued to force Lou toward the door.

“I could’ve been Morley Safer Jr. you idiot. Did you hear me? Morley Safer Jr.”

The guard pushed Lou through the door where he fell to the sidewalk.

“Hey, where’s my book?” he shouted.

The door opened and his copy of “The Morley Safer Story” was tossed into his lap. He looked down at the front cover.

“'The Morley Safer Story,’ couldn’t he have come up with a more original title than that?”

Lou got up and walked down to a nearby bar. After a while he left the bar and started walking home. As he passed the Barnes and Nobel he looked down a side alley and saw a solitary figure sitting on a crate drinking from a whiskey bottle. He walked down the alley and discovered it was Morley Safer.

“You again?” he said to Lou. “What do you want now?”

Lou pulled up another crate and sat down.

“What are you doing?”

“What’s the matter? Haven’t you ever seen a man drown his sorrows in a bottle before?”

“What do you have to feel sorry about? You’re Morley Safer.”

He turned toward Lou. “You know how many years I’ve been on 60 Minutes?”

 

“No.”

“Forty-five.”

“Wow, 45 years.”

“Do you know what it’s like to be unable to get a promotion for 45 years?”

“I know exactly how you feel. I’ve been in the cereal aisle at Walmart for three years. I ask over and over, let me have the soup aisle, but they always say the same thing: ‘That might be a little too complicated for you. You need some more seasoning.’”

“So they want you to work in the seasoning aisle?”

“What?”

“Never mind. You know what really gets me. A couple of breaks and I could’ve been really big time.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, now I haven’t told many people this, but before I was born my mother, as a young woman, had a brief fling with Omar Bradley.”

“The famous general?”

“That’s him. He was in town for a military convention. He wasn't a general back then. They met at a small café where my mother worked as a waitress.

“Now, just imagine, I could’ve been Omar Bradley Jr. Think of that. Omar Bradley Jr. I could’ve punched my own ticket. I could’ve had Walter Cronkite’s job when he retired. But no, instead they give it to that punk Dan Rather. Damn.”

Lou mulled over what he had just heard.

“Then I would have been Omar Bradley III.”

He stood up, got Morley Safer to sign his book "To Lou, the son I never had. Morley Safer," shook his hand, wished him well and went home. And from then on he never complained again about who his mother married.

Because who wants to be stuck with a name like Omar, anyway.

Omar Bradley