I saw Donny Osmond at Whole Foods!

While shopping at the Whole Foods in Downtown Summerlin, I noticed a familiar face in the produce section. Donny Osmond, quietly picking out vegetables. Nobody around him seemed to notice or care.

Flash back fifty years.

My sister AnneMarie and I grew up watching the Donny & Marie show. Every week. We sang along to their songs. The closing number, “May Tomorrow Be a Perfect Day” was a favorite. We performed in our Staten Island living room with the seriousness of a professional duo and the silliness of two kids playacting with the TV.

Years later, when AnneMarie and her family visited me in Las Vegas, she handed me a gift envelope. Inside were two show tickets. Donny and Marie, live at the Flamingo.

This brother and sister were both much older by then. So were that brother and sister, though somehow they managed to have aged less. When they got to the familiar songs, we sang along. Even all these years later, we remembered the words.

In Whole Foods, I decided to give Donny his privacy. I walked past and said nothing.

Later I found myself imagining the conversation I didn’t have. “Hi Donny. I mentioned you in my memoir.” Of all the things people say to Donny Osmond, I’m fairly confident nobody has ever led with that.

But then I had another thought, a little sadder. I’d assumed I was being polite by not approaching him. Giving him space. What if I had it backwards? There was a time — fifty years ago — when Donny Osmond walking into a supermarket would have caused absolute mayhem. Screaming. Security. The works.

Now, crickets.

I’m not sure which is lonelier, being recognized everywhere you go, or not being recognized at all. I just know that somewhere between our Staten Island living room and the produce aisle at Whole Foods, time did what time does. To Donny and his sister, to me and my sister. That, at least, we have in common.

He’s in my memoir, though. For whatever that’s worth.