November 5, 1999

So there I was, staring at the object of my childhood affections, when she smiled, showing off her dimples, and I realized that I am the luckiest guy in the world.

On Halloween night, my dreams came true and I went on a date with Farrah Fawcett.

Taylor, Melissa and Sydney pulled their best old-school threads out of the back of their closets and dressed up as three girls who had joined the police academy only to be given meaningless assignments until one man took them away from all of that and they became – insert theme music here – “Charlie’s Angels.”

Melissa played Sabrina Duncan, Sydney became Kelly Garrett and Taylor feathered her long blonde hair and transformed into the athletic and beautiful Jill Munroe.

And she looked mighty fine.

In order to fully appreciate my excitement when Charlie – played by Pablo after the whole Tupac thing didn’t work out – brought these three ladies into our living room, one needs only to flashback 15 years to a small town in central Iowa.

The setting is a late summer day and four boys have just finished playing football in the backyard. For five hours they’ve battled in the afternoon sun simply to claim one reward: the chance to drink out of the Farrah glasses.

My dad had been at a flea market one summer when — in a move he still can’t justify to my mom — he picked up two plastic glasses with Farrah Fawcett on them. One of the glasses showed Farrah sitting in a nice country landscape in a denim shirt and jeans. The other was the famous shot of her laughing by a pool in her red swimsuit.

Forget the holy grail, this was one of “Charlie’s Angels” grinning at us as we sipped our Kool-Aid. No matter what sport we were playing or how close the game was, the winners got the Farrah glasses, the losers had to settle for the Smurf collectibles from Hardees.

I never would have guessed back then as I quenched my thirst that I would someday not only be standing face-to-face, but slow dancing with the woman that defined beauty throughout my youth.

And all this while I was wearing a clumpy pillow and ratty wig to replicate Jerry Garcia. The world works in mysterious ways.

Take, for example, Taylor’s friend Martha.

Martha works with Taylor, Jane and Liza and is a tad bit older than the trouble-making trio. It’s hard to imagine she’s much older as you watch her enjoy herself with the girls, but let’s just say she’s old enough to be their considerably older cousin.

So Martha shows up to the costume party in a denim shirt with a crafty little “Martha” nametag on, as well as a pair of gardening gloves. I figure she’s just lazy and couldn’t think of a costume until I noticed the little picture on her cutesy nametag.

I was amazed. There in front of me stood the goddess of all things artsy fartsy — Martha Stewart.

Simply by putting on a pair of gloves and smiling a lot, Martha had become a spitting image of the queen of crafts and cooking. And the scary thing is that this 30-second costume won her third place in the women’s division. That put a damper on my 20 minutes worth of hair coloring and tummy stuffing and Eddie’s six hours of Milli-wig braiding when it came to efficiency ratios, but that’s why we don’t have our own TV show. Yet.

After all was said and done, Halloween night had a happy ending when Walt and Chet – who had decided not to go as Elvis and John Denver – won second place in the group division by donning heavy coats and stocking caps and adopting a heavy Canadian accent. And that’s how Bob and Doug McKenzie wound up splitting, spilling and sharing six pitchers of free beer.

In the end, everyone was happy.

Martha made herself a ribbon for third place, Charlie and his Angels posed for several photo opportunities with the paparazzi, the McKenzie brothers finally got their free beer and I got to dance with the most attractive detective the world has ever known.

That’s not too shabby for a fat, gray-haired dead hippie.