I absolutely loved doing her. She was this crazy old lady in the park who liked to feed the pigeons. She had a snaggletoothed smile, stringy gray hair peeking out from under an old torn brown felt hat, a ragged sweater, a faded dress, gloves with fingers missing, sagging stockings, and worn-out sandals.

The sketch usually started with Tim, a trim, wealthy-looking, spiffy old man, Mr. Purdy, being wheeled into the park by his nurse, Leona, who helps him get settled on a bench, leaving him there for a few minutes to enjoy reading his newspaper in the sun. This peaceful scene is always interrupted by an old bag lady, who shuffles in with a sack full of birdseed, tossing the food to the pigeons, and calling to the birds, “Here pigie, pigie, here pigie.” She plops herself next to the hapless Mr. Purdy—who is bench-bound and can’t get away from her—and strikes up a bizarre conversation. This was a sketch where I did all the talking, becoming crazier and crazier. Mr. Purdy hardly spoke, except when he looked off camera and weakly called to his nurse for help.

After Tim’s outrageous ad-lib about the Siamese elephants during a “Family” sketch earlier that season, I decided that I was going get back at him with my own unrehearsed and outrageous elephant story. This would be the perfect revenge as Tim’s character had very few lines and was stuck sitting there with nowhere to go. He was at my mercy this time. Here’s how it went…

The Pigeon Lady enters and sits on the park bench next to a wary Mr. Purdy. She says she has just come from a lecture at the civic auditorium on past lives.

(The first part of what follows is what we rehearsed all week. You’ll know when I go off script.)

PIGEON LADY: “They had this psychic today givin’ this lecture on reincarnation, y’know, how ever’ body lived a bunch of different lives, things like that. Shoot…you know Sylvia Armbruster, that big heavyset woman, whose husband is in the escrow business?”

MR. PURDY: (Warily) “No…no I don’t.”

PIGEON LADY: “That’s the one. Well, right in the middle of this throng of thousands of people, Sylvia Armbruster stands up just as big as you please and she says, ‘In a previous lifetime, I was Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt!’ (Cackles) “I ’bout died! Boy, was she sucked in! Can you imagine Sylvia Armbruster, Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt?” (Cackles) “NO WAY…I was!”

MR. PURDY: (Weakly calling out) “Leona!”

PIGEON LADY: “Egypt was nice. It was a little bit like Idaho, but without the mountains and the Winnebagos.”

She goes on to describe her life with Julius Caesar.

PIGEON LADY: “Boy, for a guy who used to run around all day in the forum in a dress, at night he made Burt Reynolds look like Mr. Whipple.”

MR. PURDY: “Leona…”

Making matters worse, she rattles on that in yet another lifetime she was married to Attila the Hun.

PIGEON LADY: “I met old Attila in a singles bar. He made me a charm bracelet once out of genuine ‘people teeth.’ An’ ever’ time we had an anniversary, he’d add another little charm to it.”

By this time, Mr. Purdy is desperate and weakly tries whistling for Leona, to no avail.

PIGEON LADY: (Continuing) “He gave me a rock once. It must’ve been yea big. It wasn’t your ordinary rock at all. It happened when he was pillaging through Italy. Got it at Gucci’s. Yep, he was a swell little provider.”

(Now I go off script.)

PIGEON LADY: “An’ then for transportation once, he gave me this pair of elephants. They was Siamese…” (The crew starts to laugh, and Tim begins to realize he’s in for it. The audience catches on right away because they remember the time Tim had us at his mercy with his elephant story.) “They was joined at the trunk, an’ when one of ’em had to go somewhere, the other one would have to run backwards! Then one of ’em caught a cold, and sneezed, an’ blew both their brains out!”

We did another one of these sketches the following season, and I decided I would come up with yet a different elephant story to get Tim.

Mr. Purdy’s nurse, Leona, helps him onto the park bench before she exits. He’s calmly reading his newspaper when the Pigeon Lady enters and plops down next to him.

PIGEON LADY: “Here pigie, pigie. Eat all yer corn an’ I’ll tell you where there’s a new statue.” (She looks at Mr. Purdy) “Nice day, isn’t it?” (He nods politely) “What’s yer sign?”

MR. PURDY: “Sagittarius.”

PIGEON LADY: “Oh.” (Grins at him happily) “I hear tell that a ‘Sage’ makes a good lover!” (He’s becoming uncomfortable) “I’m a Leo, y’know, like the lion? Grrrrr!”

Mr. Purdy looks off for Leona.

PIGEON LADY: “You married?” (He shakes his head no) “Well you’re all alike. I lived with this guy once, named AR-MAN-DO. I lived with him an’ he split on me without so much as leavin’ me a dime. I moved in with him one morning. I gave him everything I had…an’ he split that afternoon.”

While Mr. Purdy is looking off for Leona to come save him, the Pigeon Lady rattles on about how she met Armando when he was in the navy and how she used to play the trumpet for all the “gobs” on the ship, “the SS Burgoyne.” She shows him a snapshot of her, Armando, and the gobs.

PIGEON LADY: “That’s me there. You can tell by my smile.” (Flashes her snaggletoothed grin) “One time I played ‘Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy from Company B’ for three solid hours! Yep, I blew enough wind to sail that sucker to Guam!”

She calls his attention to Armando’s little sister, Alexandra, who is also in the snapshot.

PIGEON LADY: “She was a gob, too! All the other gobs called her ‘Alexandra the Great!’ She was a little bitty thing, no bigger’n a milk bottle. All of us used to go up on deck and play with her. We’d play ‘Spin the Gob!’ ”

(At this point, I went off script and started to spin a whole other story.)

PIGEON LADY: (Continuing) “Then after she got out of the navy, Alexandra went into the circus.” (Tim starts to catch on and stifles a grin. The audience, along with our crew, is in on it, too.) “She became the world’s littlest elephant trainer. She’d play ‘Spin the Trunk!’ Well, this big ol’ elephant got real mad at her an’ one day he stepped on Alexandra, an’ he killed her! She was just a spot in the sawdust. An’ that elephant was charged with murder…an’ he went to trial…an’ the jury came back with a verdict of ‘Guilty, of premeditated murder’…an’ they hung that elephant…as a deterrent to other elephants!”

At this point, Tim looked into the camera, shook his head back and forth, and rolled his eyes to heaven, all the while stifling a laugh.

I had a ball doing this to him!

“There was this pair of elephants.”