My first or second season as a writer on Seinfeld, Jerry Seinfeld called all of the writers together. He and Larry David were working on an idea, and for some reason Jerry felt like he had seen something similar somewhere before. None of us could place it, but Jerry had a hunch.

He thought it was from an episode of Dick Van Dyke. So he got on a speakerphone and called Carl Reiner, right in front of all of us. Jerry described the idea to him (an idea which I can’t for the life of me remember) and he asked Carl if that idea sounded familiar.

Carl said “yeah, that was from season three episode fifteen” or something to that effect. Again, I can’t remember the details. But he sure could. The man was doing 36 episodes a year more than 30 years earlier, and he remembered the season and the episode number.

Jerry thanked him, hung up the phone and said “I knew I had seen it before. We can’t do it.” I remember being in awe of the fact that Jerry would throw a really funny idea away because something similar had been done 30 years previous. It really impacted me as a young writer.

But mostly I remember being totally floored by how incredibly sharp Carl Reiner was in that moment. An incredible talent and a wonderful man has left us. RIP sir.