Show ill Beatts earns her As A's By Andrew J Edelstein Her life might have been different If only someone had asked Anne Beatts to dance at her high school freshman hop Miss Beatts might now be living in a suburban ranch house wearing pedal pushers running the kids car pool Instead she's single and wears such garb as a fake skin leopard packet Jacket leopard framed sunglasses and scarlet And more than likely there probably wouldn't be such a program as Square Pegs the CBS sitcom that Miss Beatts created and produces about two contemporary school high freshmen who desperately are trying to fit In Its two main characters are patterned after Miss Beatts and her best friend during their school days My first year I went to the freshman dance with great expectations and I wasn't asked to dance the whole night I remember coming home and crying That was my most painful memory of my high school years says Miss Beatts 35 who also wrote for the original Saturday Night Live I had attended a private school before transferring to high school I didn't realize that being a stranger and not knowing anyone meant that I was going to be socially ostracized recalls MIss Beatts during an Interview In a Manhattan penthouse office But things do work themselves out Remember when your mother said in 10 years you'll look back on all this and laugh Well its it's been more like 20 But she was right Moms Mom's always right Indeed she Is Square Pegs has become an early early- season critics favorite One writer called it the revenge of the alienated a description with which Miss Beatts wholeheartedly agrees At least one former classmate at Miss Beatts suburban New York high school was so moved by the program that she wrote her a letter speculating About which Pegs characters were based on their school chums fishing through her bulky notebook MIss Beatts extracts the lengthy handwritten note along with three Polaroid photos One photo Is of her classmate a woman In her late with a blonde bouffant standing with her husband outside their Kentucky split level Both are wearing Hawaiian shirts Were on the way to A luau she writes Can you believe I went to school with this woman Miss Beatts Bealts asks Another photo shows the womans woman's year old son a Square Pegs fan who returned from school one after after- afternoon noon to report that his classmates were now walking about the halls muttering the pithy phrase tOtally totally differ differ- different r ent head the signature of Johnny Slash Pegs new waver I guess this is the road not take taken says MIss Beasts Bealls 1992 |