You became a legend of the silver screen

Yesterday, heading home from work, I passed a woman I thought was Penny Marshall. There was no way to be sure -- I didn't hear her talking, and she wasn't wearing anything monogrammed. And I suppose there are more than a few women in New York City who look kind of like Penny Marshall. But I still think it was her. And I was still considering the likelihood of this two blocks later when I passed a man who I am pretty sure was Robert De Niro. Again, I can't be positive -- he wasn't waxing poetic about the city as he walked ("My West Side... my private side") or anything like that. He wasn't doing anything but walking down the street, but he was walking in that tentative, I-hope-nobody-bothers-me style peculiar to the very famous, which (combined with the sunglasses he wore) helped me go from thinking "That guy looks like Robert De Niro" to "That guy is Robert De Niro." It also made him look surprisingly vulnerable. So I left him alone, as he probably was hoping I would (whether he was De Niro or not), and when I got to the fiance's place I said, "I think I just saw Robert De Niro! Except his physical presence was not as imposing as I would have expected." And my fiance said, "I think De Niro is a little guy." So I looked it up: this is true! Did you know he's only 5'9"?

I could be wrong. Maybe there was a celebrity look-alikes convention in Clinton yesterday, or maybe my mind was just trying to make my walk home more exciting than my long day at work had been. If you have conclusive evidence that either or both of these people were not in NYC yesterday, feel free to burst my bubble. But in the meantime, I'm crediting myself with two more Eighth Avenue star-sightings!