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This girl I used to waitress with in Austin, we moved to New York together in 2003 on a literal Greyhound bus. Shared a fifth floor walk-up studio that, when it rained, had more leaks in the ceiling than we had pots and pans. We used to get drunk and smoke off the fire escape and do “sad-offs.”

A sad-off is when you go back and forth playing sadder and sadder songs at full blast until you’re both too inconsolable to play another. Dolly Parton’s “Down from Dover” won the whole tournament. One of the most light-hearted people to ever live gave us the saddest song in the world. Thank you.

A two-story barbecue restaurant in Times Square “took a chance” on me because I aced the barbecue fundamentals test without having to study. All the other servers were aspiring Broadway, including this gay blond guy in his thirties who loved Dolly so much that when I told him about the “sad-off”

and he said when he was a baby he had terrible colic. Cried day and night. His mom was a young military bride, all alone on a base in Germany, and tried everything she could to help her baby feel better — swaddling, rocking, different formula, long walks, tummy massage — but he was inconsolable.

Until one day she put on a Dolly Parton record and voilà he was calm and quiet. Not sleepy, eyes wide open, mouth agape, taking in the voice of (to his mom, anyway) a literal angel.

That was how the rest of his childhood went. His dad away blowing something up, him and his mom at home, happy and loving and listening to Dolly. When he was all grown up and pursuing his Broadway dreams, they went on their ultimate dream vacation together, to Dollywood. And she was there.