The first time I met Bob Novak, I was eight years old. I remember what I was wearing -- a sleeveless tomato-soup-red wool knit jumpsuit with swingy wide legs and a brown turtleneck beneath (my most soigné and mature-looking outfit at the time) -- and that I sat in it, cross-legged on the trunk of my mother's car, waiting patiently for him to come up the driveway with my father.