[STEPHEN SONDHEIM, spoken]
Ten years after I was born, my parents were divorced
And my mother got custody of me
And bought a house in Doylestown, Pennsylvania

I was an only child, and both my parents were working parents
So because I had no sort of childhood companion
And my mother was a celebrity hunter
Ahe knew slightly the Oscar Hammersteins
And they lived about three miles away
So she sort of foisted me on them because they had a son my own age
Actually a year younger. Jimmy Hammerstein

And as a rеsult
Dorothy and Oscar Hammerstein becamе my surrogate parents
During my teen years
And that's essentially how I became a songwriter
Because I wanted to do what Oscar did
I've often said if he had been a geologist
I probably would have been a geologist