Henry Winkler is not my cousin.

(Title to be sung to the tune of "Billy Jean" for maximum impact.)

I grew up watching "Happy Days." It wasn't that I particularly liked the show, it just always seemed to be on when I got home from school. When I was 7 or 8, my grandmother (whose maiden name was Winkler) told me that Henry Winkler was a distant cousin of ours. This was fascinating news.

"Really?!" I cried. "How do you know?"

She explained that his father was a second cousin (or something like that) of her father back in Germany.

I was totally excited, and for years this was the most interesting thing I had going for me. (Well, aside from eating boogers and obsessively counting things. Henry Winkler totally won the prize.)

As I got older, occasionally converstions would come up about encounters with famous people; other times there would be little ice breaker activities at various functions where you had to tell two true things and one lie about yourself so that other people could guess what you were lying about. Of course, I worked The Fonze in at every opportunity.

The first time I went to Hollywood (I was 24), I took a picture of Henry Winkler's star on the Walk of Fame and sent it to my grandmother. I couldn't understand why she wasn't more excited.

Chris always doubted my story. "Henry Winkler's Jewish," he said. "You're family's not Jewish." For me this wasn't a deal-breaker.

"So what? Maybe there's some Jewish branch of our family that never came over from Germany," I defended.

One day I saw him being interviewed on TV, so I decided to look up some information about him and his family on the internet. His dad was the president of some big company and his family had money. Certainly no one in my family had any money. I started to have my doubts, and expressed them to my aunt.

"She made it up," my aunt confided. "But don't tell her I told you!" So, of course, I confronted my grandmother.

"I'm starting to think that Henry Winkler is not our cousin," I told her pointedly. (And keep in mind this is my grandmother for whom cussing consists of "Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!")

"Oh, Jesus Christ!" she snapped. "I just said that to entertain you kids! None of the others ever cared! You were the only one who remembered and you just kept on and on and on about it!"

I pretended to be really wounded. "How could you lie about something so important?"

"I didn't think it would go one for 20 years! You just wouldn't let it go!"

So. My grandma's a liar. I love that about her.