 Mengering, who always addressed her son as "David", would patiently answer her son's questions and generally play along with his suggestions—though some of Letterman's more deliberately nonsensical suggestions were kindly but firmly shut down.Letterman's phone calls would usually involve Mengering being asked to review a movie or a TV show, share a recipe, or recount a recent event in her life; on one occasion, she was asked to present a Top Ten list of things in her refrigerator.Mengering's first on-camera appearance on "The Late Show" was in 1994, when she provided nightly coverage of the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer.