My Bill Hader pregnant cat sketch got read at the table and went over so poorly I remember wondering if I should fake meningitis so that I could blame that for such a bad sketch. Or if I could, at all, play it off as so ironically terrible it was good. What? I’m not hipster enough for that? I started writing my agent an e-mail asking if I could leave after my first week there. I was literally in the middle of writing it when I heard a knock on my and Kristen’s door. It was Amy Poehler.

Me: Hi. Kristen is on stage, I think, but I can leave her a message.
Amy: Oh, I wanted to talk to you.

Amy went on to ask if I was going to go out with some of the writers and actors after work. I nodded yes, which was a huge lie. I had planned on sprinting back to the Sofitel (where they were putting me up a few blocks away) and falling asleep watching the syndicated That 70’s Show, which I had done every night since I landed in New York. But Amy, being warm, prescient, Amy, said knowingly, “Why don’t I just wait here for you and we can walk over together?”

Everyone has a moment when they discover they love Amy Poehler. For most people it happened sometime during her run at Saturday Night Live. For some it was when she came back to the show in 2009, nine months’ pregnant, and did that complicated, hard-core Sarah Palin rap on Weekend Update.

I first noticed Amy when I was in high school and I saw her on Conan’s first show. She was in a sketch playing Andy Richter’s “little sister Stacy.” Stacy had pigtails and headgear and was obsessed with Conan. As a performer, she was this pretty little gremlin, all elbows and blond hair and manic eyes. As a teenager, I tracked her career as best I could without the Internet, and was overjoyed when I saw she had become a cast member of Saturday Night Live. I loved when she played Kaitlin, with her cool stepdad, Rick.

But when this popular, pretty genius made this kind gesture to me? That’s the moment I started adoring Amy Poehler.