“I’m going to take the same as her.”

The tragic death of actor, director, and producer Rob Reiner and his wife, Michele Singer, has brought to mind a scene that needs no introduction: Meg Ryan's fake orgasm inWhen Harry Met SallyWhen you hadn't yet recovered (it was 1989) from the orgasm that had silenced the entire restaurant room, an older woman sitting at the table by the side finished the sequence with the immortal order to the waiter: "I'm going to have the same as her" ("I'll have what she's having")

The great Nora Ephron, screenwriter of the film, always acknowledged that the line was Billy Crystal's idea and that it was Rob Reiner who decided to give the role to his mother, Estelle Reiner, whom he warned that if the line wasn't even funnier than the faked orgasm, he shouldn't cast her. The rest is film history.

The backstory is exciting because the talent working as a team was able to capture the human soul in its most basic and justified reaction: if she's in seventh heaven, I want it too (even though I don't have the comb or the age to be someone who wants to have an orgasm in public). Desiring what has worked for someone else, especially if it's daring and breaks social conventions. It's happened to all of us. It happens every day in clothing stores, where customers ask the saleswomen for the very dress the saleswomen are wearing. "I'll have what she's having" is a monument to the human condition. The fact that Rob Reiner and his wife were murdered is a horrific end for someone who made us laugh so much.