My favorite part is at the end, when I thought that camera was off—and I’m doing a high-five with the host, Desiree Fontaine, and I say triumphantly, “I didn’t cough!” It’s because I had the world’s worst cough, and I was quite sure that at some point in the interview, she would ask me a question, and I would start hacking up a lung and would fall to the ground, eyes and nose streaming. (I think the producer of the show might have been worried about that, too, since she ran and got me a throat lozenge, which later I found stuck to my skirt.)

Sometimes I just have to stop and count my blessings that I’m a writer and so I don’t have to go in public very often.