“To See or Not to See”

Micky: Uh, bein’ um, obviously, bein’ a celebrity, being in the, the public, uh, eye all the time has its incredible advantages and wonderful upside, but um, it can, at times, as I’m sure you’ve noticed or heard, it can also have a, you know, sort of a downside in that you lose all your, your uh, privacy. Especially these days, good lord. Um, but even back then, uh, the whole Monkee thing was, you know, an incredible blessing. But um, back in, even back in the sixties, it, it could get uh, tough at times. And I remember, I uh, uh, I had a daughter. She was about eight or ten years old at the time, uh… You gonna eat that? Ha ha. I had a daughter um, uh, named Ami, and—my darling, Ami, and she was about eight or ten years old. I was living in England, and she was living in Los Angeles at the time, but I would go out and visit two or three times a year. And one time, I went out, and um, uh, she loved to go ice skating, and I would take her ice skating. But uh, the Monkees show had, I guess, gotten a big resurgence in the seventies or, or somethin’ like that, and uh, it was on re-runs, and so uh, we went out to this ice skating rink in Los Angeles, and uh, put on the skates, and we start skating around, and uh, suddenly, all the kids and the parents and everybody recognized me, and they’re all skating, and they’re all like, oh, can I have an autograph, can I have a photograph, and I’m trying to be nice, but I mean, I want some, you know, some daddy time with, you know, I only saw her a couple of times a year at the time, and one of those times, I just would kind of wished I’d been in-invisible. But, wasn’t gonna happen, and she got very upset. She started crying, and she said w-we had to leave. We had to leave the ice skating rink. And, um, about a week later, I said, okay, let’s go back to the ice skating rink, I got a plan. So we went back, and I put on a big hat, like this, and dark glasses, and… it worked. We put on the skates, and we start skating around the rink. Nobody noticed. It was like perfect, it was great. Skating along, we get about halfway around, she says daddy, can you take off the hat and glasses?