Garry Trudeau, creator of Doonesbury, turned 60 today.

Do you think he remembers having drawn the sketch below at a Reuben Awards banquet in 1973 when he was but 25 and I was just a snotty kid with a sketchbook and a pleading voice?

Nah.

I, on the other hand, remember it very well. (There should be a word for that, the encounter which one party regards as meaningful and the other finds either meaningless or completely unmemorable.)

In any case, as I type these words, it suddenly leaps out at me—he was only freakin’ 25? And already helping to topple a president, with a Pulitzer only two years away? It makes me feel as if I haven’t done enough to justify my existence today.

Happy birthday, Garry!