My client was hysterical. She’s a mom and she was calling to tell me that she’d been pink-slipped from her six-figure job at Universal. She said she couldn’t afford paying me to take her son to the Brentwood School every morning this September.

I got other calls like that from Industry parents who were panicking about their child’s education during the current recession. With no limo, would their kids be able to help Hollywood compete in the 21st century?

That’s when I realized: Why not take the school to the kids!

When I told my fellow drivers that I was thinking about turning my limo into a charter school, they thought I was snorting bath salts. But September’s almost here, and I’m proud to announce that the Stretch Academy has enrolled its first class of six students.

We have a simple entrance...

Say you hire me. OK, now say I pick you up and we get under way and you tell me, "We need to make a stop on the way to pick up a friend." Am I supposed to know how good a friend this guy is to you? Is he your best friend? Maybe you don’t even really like the guy. Maybe you’re kidnapping him. How am I supposed to know?

That’s my point: I can’t.

Don’t ask me to be King Solomon. I’m definitely not getting paid like King Solomon. I mean, he had mines, full of gold. As a limo driver, I’m clearing a few hundred a night, maybe, just to get your ass close to a doorway and pay for all the gas.

Yet somehow people put all their decisions on me. I had an actor client once. Drove him around all night, while he talked to his wife. At one point he put her on speaker so I could hear what she was saying for 10 minutes. Then he...

Between the end of Oscar season and the beginning of prom season, business got so bad it looked like maybe 35 or 40 percent of the limo driving work force would be wiped out. This would have been a catastrophic blow to America’s entertainment industry.

I mentioned how bad things were one night to a client in the backseat, the multi-talented actor/director Tim Robbins. I wanted him to sign my petition – demanding that they call in the National Guard to drive and maintain the limos in the interest of homeland security rather than let such a crucial sector of the economy go bust.

But it was as if he hadn’t heard me. 

All he said was, “Ping-pong.”

He started out muttering. But it got louder and louder.

“Are you okay, Mr. Robbins?”  I felt I had to ask after half an hour of him screaming...

I was parked at the Beverly Hilton with a couple dozen other limos when the dispatcher signaled me to roll because my client was ready. I thought it a little strange that I was the only driver told to rev up.

But you don’t have time to think when you’re working a big event. You just make sure you follow the route and go wherever the signs or attendants at the hotel are pointing you. I swung up the ramp and pulled up at the curb, and the back door was opened, and a tall, slender guy got in.

I saw his eyes in the rearview, and he saw mine, and he said: “Who the f--- are you?”

It was the President. He’d been speaking at a fund-raiser. I knew that. But who ever really expects to have a prayer like meeting Barack Obama answered.

I said, “People call me Stretch, Mr. President, and this is the proudest moment of my life....