Let me tell y'all a little bit about Anne Garrels.

Barbara Walters Anne Garrels is not.

Anne got her big break as a Moscow correspondent, pre-perestroika, having to look over her shoulder for the KGB. Since then, if there's been a war, she's been there. Anne's like Harrison's Flowers on crack. Gulf War I. Bosnia. Kosovo. Chechnya. Afghanistan. And currently Baghdad. Again. She's in between stints on the NPR Baghdad rotation, and she's going back in a couple weeks.

She hopes to be home by Christmas.

Based on that itinerary, aka "The Vacation from Hell," I'd personaly dub Anne lucky to be alive. She's really a legend, although I only know her by voice on NPR.

Remember when the army accidentally shelled the Palestine Hotel last year, where all the journalists were staying, and two Spanish cameramen were killed? Anne was two floors below. You may even remember her NPR report when that happened, or even one of her many other dispatches in harm's way.

So a few days ago when the dean of my school mentioned an informal Sunday afternoon chat with Anne Garrels of NPR, I instantly woke up in my seat from whatever else they had been blabbering on about at 9AM in the fricking morning.

I show up on Sunday and am surprised that nobody's in the auditorium, where I thought the session would meet. But I see the dean chatting with someone else outside, so I tentatively approach and ask where the discussion is being held.

She tells me, "Anne just needed a quick smoke break." ("Understandable," is what I immediately think. If you're Anne Garrels how do you not smoke?) "But we're heading up right now. This is Anne, by the way."

And then it was just one of those moments.

Look, I grew up in LA, so celebrity is not a huge thing to me. A-list actors are a dime-a-dozen. People are seen. It happens. Hey, I've told Al Pacino what his lobster specials were, for crissake.

For me, a person like Anne Garrels is the real Al Pacino. Tom Cruise. Whatever - you name it.

Somehow, I remember successfully offering my hand and telling her what an '*amazing* pleasure it is.' This woman is what journalism is all about - what it should be about. (Of course, without the whole constant threat of death looming over you like a dark cloud - that would be nice.)

So there we are, just the three of us, riding in an elevator. The Dean of my school. And Anne Garrels, internationally-acclaimed-uber-war-correspondent. And, uh, me.

("Don't panic, Dickie! Just don't fucking think about what is happening right now...")

She asked a little about my background and I think I made it sound somewhat compelling, but then I remembered I was talking to Anne fucking Garrels and the stupidity of trying to impress this woman with my background.

Then she asked me what I wanted to do and I prefaced by saying "basically, what you do" and instantly wanted to bash my head against the wall for such a stupid thing to say. "'What you do'??" This woman works in hell for a living! This woman sees horrors that I could only imagine. How frickin naive.

The interesting thing is that if she found my comment naive, she didn't show it. Anne loves her job, in a strange way.

The three of us walk into a classroom of, like, ten other students. I see a couple of them glance at me, and I wonder if they think I actually had the balls to go up and interrupt the dean & Anne to introduce myself.

I think the more important issue is this: Anne has more balls than any of us ever will. Just a few months ago I was sitting comfortably in my car listening to her talk about being fortunate enough to not be in the wrong place at the wrong time in Baghdad. Now I'm here talking to her in person. Crazy.

(Next post: the chat itself.)