Bob's parents' 50th wedding anniversary is this month, so they invited friends and family to a celebration at a local hotel on Saturday. There was a "pre-party" Friday night for a few of us--those children who are in town and two couples who were visiting from out of town. Bob's aunt and uncle were there, plus one of his cousins who, in spite of the fact that we think we may not have seen each other for over twenty years, I think I would have recognized anywhere.

Each of Bob's brothers and sister stood up and told a couple of anecdotes from their years of living at home with their parents, and they were all very good. Bob, especially, is a born storyteller and raconteur, and had everyone laughing.

My favorite of his stories was one where he was standing on a dock directing his mother, who was driving a boat, to pull up onto the dock. He was, of course, being his usual overly dramatic, hamming-it-up self, and she was getting annoyed with him (and he with her, apparently).

He told her to gun it, and she did, hitting him right in the chest with the boat and knocking him off the dock.

He said that when he surfaced he thought she might ask him how he was, ask if he was all right, but no--her first words were, "It serves you right for giving me bad directions."

After all the children had spoken, someone asked if any of the wives or husbands had anything to say, and I spoke up and told about the time Bob and his parents left me stranded at Cinderella's Castle at Disney World a few years ago. They had gone out to eat and I had begged off and gone shopping, telling them I would meet them at 7:00 in front of the castle.

7:00 came and went, the park closed, and I began to worry that they had driven somewhere and gotten into an accident, or someone had gotten sick or something--because why else would they have forgotten me?

I eventually had to leave the park because it was closed, so I stopped outside and called the hotel on a pay phone, and Bob answered. I asked him what he was doing and he said, "Sleeping." He asked me where I was and I said, "Up until the park closed, I was right where I said I'd be at 7:00--sitting in front of Cinderella's Castle waiting for you."

He woke up fast, and although I said I was perfectly capable of getting back to the hotel on my own, as they had apparently decided I could do anyway, he insisted on coming to rescue me on the monorail.

I couldn't resist telling that one.

I keep meaning to put this picture up. It's me and my co-workers sitting on the steps of building on Denim Day in October. And Diehard standing in front, wearing his Denim Day t-shirt.