Movie Memories... Ping Pong

It's 1988 and my college friend, Mike McLane, and I trek to visit the Disney/MGM Studios for the first time. On the tour of the studios, I looked through the windows high above the soundstages and down onto the soundstage floor where a commercial is being filmed. I wanted to be on a real movie set so bad I could taste it. I turned to Mike and said "How cool would it be to work down there? One day, I'm going to be down there. Somehow."

Flash forward about two years. I'm on the same soundstage dressed as the Number 3 Ping Pong Ball in a Florida Lottery commercial. I looked ridiculous, to be sure. But I gazed up from the soundstage floor to the same windows behind which I had once stood... and smiled.

I had made at least this little dream come true.