Studying With Steverino : An awe-inspiring, nerve-rattling piano lesson with Steve Allen turns into a breeze. He does all the playing.

If I had to take a piano lesson, and I haven’t had to take a piano lesson in more than 20 years, it might as well be with someone with talent and experience. Maybe even someone well known. Maybe someone like, well, Steve Allen.

What could I possibly have been thinking?

As a mother of two, I rarely have time to sit down at the beautiful black-lacquer Yamaha upright, one of my most prized possessions, tucked in the corner of my living room. I gaze longingly at that piano sometimes, and it just sits there, mute, a taunting reminder of the days I actually had time to play.

But a chance to tickle the ivories with Steve Allen himself, the legendary comedian and composer? This would be too good to be true. I called Allen’s office in Van Nuys, asking if he would be willing to teach me some of the tricks offered in his new video, “A Lesson With Steve Allen: An Introduction to Jazz Piano.” A week later, word came back that he had agreed.

I was going to have to perform for a consummate performer.

I panicked.

When I wasn’t watching the video and practicing jazz techniques, I was having nightmares about falling off piano benches.

“Don’t worry,” my husband assured me the night before the Big Lesson. “What could possibly go wrong?”

Let’s see. I could throw up on his piano. I could faint. I could have a heart attack and he’d have to interrupt the lesson to call the paramedics. I could forget everything I ever learned about the piano the minute I sat down to play.

With those doomsday thoughts uppermost in my mind, I arrived in Van Nuys early to scope out our meeting place, an office in one of two squat side-by-side buildings on Burbank Boulevard. Ten minutes before the appointed hour, I pulled into the driveway between them and looked for a parking space.

One space was ominously marked, “Don’t even think about parking here,” and I didn’t. I pulled into the one unmarked space, took a deep breath, and prayed that I would get through the next hour without being humiliated.

I entered the building and walked up the wide staircase, gazing at the walls lined with photographs and memorabilia, reminders that the person I was about to meet was no unsung piano teacher.

His assistants informed me that Allen was late. One entertained me while I waited. The tension rose.

About 10 minutes later, an aquamarine Rolls-Royce sailed by the front door, heralding Allen’s arrival. His assistant scurried to meet him, then returned to lead me to “the cave,” a rather dark-sounding place to be taking a piano lesson.

As I entered a side room, Allen came out to greet me. He was taller than I expected and he had on his ubiquitous eyeglasses, which give him a professorial look. He was dressed casually in a short-sleeved shirt, beige slacks and brown loafers, his gold watch and diamond-studded gold ring the only hint of wealth.

He invited me into “the cave,” a deceptive description for a brightly lighted white room with--of all things!--a larger and much fancier version of my own black-lacquer Yamaha upright.

Allen sat down at the piano while I stood nearby and, with little preliminary chit-chat, the lesson began. He warmed up by demonstrating, as he does on the video, some easy combinations of chords.

“Of course, it takes anywhere from three minutes to a day-and-a-half or whatever to train your hand to keep doing that while you do something else up here,” Allen told me as he weaved together magical combinations of chords.

“Dear God,” I prayed. “Don’t make me have to repeat this right here.”

“That’s beautiful,” I told Allen.

“It’s simple,” he replied.

“Simple for you,” I blurted, prompting a chuckle of agreement from the former “Tonight Show” host.

As the demonstration continued, I realized my prayer had been answered. Either our messages had crossed, or Allen’s idea of a piano lesson was “he plays while I watch.”

Now, given my anxiety, what do you think the chances were that I was going to interrupt with a, “Hi, Ho, Steverino! How about giving me a whack at your Yamaha?” Not likely. No, I took the cowardly approach. I pulled over a nearby rocking chair, sat down and, for the first time in days, relaxed.

Allen continued playing blues, boogie-woogie and jazz, turning the piano lesson into a history-of-music lesson, just as he does on his videotape. We talked about his early interest in music, the decline of American music, the general decline of society. Each subject prompted a story, an acerbic commentary and a musical demonstration.

I asked if he had ever given anyone a piano lesson, sensing that this was a novel experience for him.

“Only my children and grandchildren and very casually,” he replied. He then related the story of how his son with Jayne Meadows, William Christopher Allen, now president of MTM Television, once asked him how to play a flashy introduction to Jerome Kern’s “This Song Is You.”

“We spent about an hour and a half at the piano,” Allen said, and his son quickly learned the introduction. “Unfortunately, he never learned to play anything else. But, to this day, if he’s at a party and people will say, ‘Do you play, Bill?’ he’ll go over and play (the introduction), and they think, ‘My God, the kid’s brilliant!’ ”

He had better luck, apparently, with his 12-year-old grandson, Michael Allen, who he proudly informed me recently won top honors with three of his friends at the Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival in Moscow, Ida.

It began to get late, and my real world beckoned. I said my thank-yous and goodbys. On the way out, I noticed that someone had actually dared to park in that “Don’t even think about it” spot. It was the owner of a shiny, shimmery, aquamarine Rolls-Royce.