I was sitting on a plastic chair in the middle of a crowded ballroom at a nostalgia convention in New Jersey.

The room was packed with people wearing olive drab t-shirts and dog tags.

It is always a bit overwhelming to see how much MAS*H still means to everyone after all these decades.

A young man stood up at the microphone in the center aisle.

He looked like he wasn’t even born when we filmed the finale.

He asked me, “Mr. Farr, we all know Klinger wore some incredible outfits, but was there ever a moment where a costume actually put your life in danger?”

I started to laugh before he even finished the sentence.

My mind went back immediately to 1980.

We were filming an episode called “April Fools.”

The script called for Klinger to make a grand entrance as Cleopatra.

Now, I had worn dresses, I had worn fruit on my head, and I had even flown in a hang glider wearing a pink skirt.

But this was different.

The wardrobe department had really outdone themselves.

I was draped in gold sequins, heavy beads, and a massive, towering Egyptian headdress.

I also had about three pounds of blue eyeshadow on my face.

The kicker was that the director wanted me to make my entrance on a horse.

Not just any horse, but a beautiful, high-strung white horse that looked like it belonged in a parade, not a muddy set in Malibu.

The sun was beating down on the Fox Ranch, and we were behind schedule.

The crew was exhausted, and the tension was thick because we needed to get this shot in one take before the light changed.

I was hoisted up onto this animal, feeling the weight of the sequins scratching my skin and the headdress wobbling precariously.

The horse was already eyeing me with what I can only describe as deep horse-judgment.

I gathered the reins, adjusted my golden skirt, and tried to look regal.

And that’s when it happened.

The horse took one look at my giant, shimmering headdress in its peripheral vision and decided that I was not a queen, but perhaps a very shiny, gold-plated monster that needed to be removed immediately.

Just as the director yelled “Action,” the horse didn’t walk forward gracefully as planned.

Instead, it gave a sudden, violent shiver that sent my headdress sliding directly over my eyes.

I was instantly plunged into total darkness.

I couldn’t see a thing, but I could feel the horse starting to sidestep and dance toward the edge of the dirt path.

I was blinded by Egyptian gold and clutching the mane for dear life, screaming in my best Klinger voice, “Whoa, Nelly! Whoa, Cleo! Somebody grab the Pharaoh!”

The horse started to trot in circles, and because I was blinded, I was leaning the wrong way, which only made the horse more panicked.

I could hear the entire crew go dead silent for a split second, and then it happened.

The explosion of laughter started with the camera operators.

You could actually see the camera shaking on the dailies later because the guy behind the lens was vibrating with hysterics.

I finally managed to shove the headdress up just enough to see that I was heading straight for the mess tent where the rest of the cast was waiting.

Alan Alda was standing there, supposed to be playing a serious scene about a colonel’s inspection, but he had doubled over.

He was literally clutching his knees, unable to breathe.

But the person who really made it impossible to recover was Harry Morgan.

Harry, as Colonel Potter, usually had this incredible discipline.

He was an old-school pro.

But as my horse spun me toward him, and I sat there in a crooked wig with blue makeup smeared across my forehead, Harry didn’t help me.

He just stood there, tucked his hands into his belt, and yelled out, “Corporal, I believe your crown is slipping, and so is your dignity!”

That was the end of it.

The entire cast broke.

Mike Farrell started making whinnying noises from the sidelines, and every time I tried to climb down, someone would crack another joke about the “Queen of the Nile” needing a ladder.

The director was sitting in his chair with his head in his hands, just shaking.

He wasn’t even mad anymore; the sheer absurdity of a middle-aged man from Toledo, Ohio, blinded by a sequined hat while wrestling a horse had broken the professional resolve of every person on that set.

We had to stop filming for forty-five minutes.

Every time they wiped my eyes and reset the horse, someone would catch my eye and start giggling again.

I remember Loretta Swit pointing at my smeared makeup and saying I looked like a raccoon that had fallen into a glitter factory.

The crew was wiping tears from their eyes, and the animal wrangler was trying to apologize, but he was laughing too hard to get the words out.

The best part was that we didn’t have a backup costume.

The sequins had started to tear from the friction of the saddle, so the wardrobe ladies were frantically sewing gold beads back onto my thighs while I was still sitting on the horse.

I was just sitting there, being poked by needles, looking like a disgraced goddess, while Harry Morgan kept walking by and whispering, “Give ’em hell, Cleo.”

It’s moments like those that made the show what it was.

We were a family, and families laugh when things go wrong.

That ridiculous, golden disaster became a legendary story in the mess tent for weeks.

Even now, when I see a horse, I check to make sure my hat is on straight.

It’s funny how the most stressful, chaotic days on set end up being the ones you treasure the most forty years later.

We weren’t just making a TV show; we were having the time of our lives in the middle of all that pretend war.

Does anyone else find that their most embarrassing work blunders ended up being their favorite memories?