Long Lost

Speaking of the SD63 Chili Dinner...

...it was about twenty years ago that I met the sister and brother in law of a college friend of mine (one of a couple of college friends with whom I'd eventually wind up sharing a house in south Minneapolis - but all of that's a subject for an upcoming "It Was Twenty Years Ago..." installment). They - Brian and Paula - were a young couple with a nifty little pre-war bungalow down in the forties on Oakland Avenue. They had a daughter; she was about a eighteen months when we met. When I met the baby, I did what I usually do when babies look at me; I stuck my finger in my ear, and twisted it, sticking my tongue in and out as I did it - like it was a crank for moving my tongue. I earned Brian and Paula's everlasting ire when the baby started doing it back; every time the baby saw me, she's get a wide grin and start sticking her tongue out, over and over.

Time went on. I moved on to other manic roommate situations. I lost touch with Brian and Paula and their daughter in about 1987.

Fast forward to last night at the chili feed. I noticed a couple; a fortyish guy, his wife, and a woman, apparently their daughter. The mother rang a bell; not a big bell, one of those tiny little bells that you put on one of those little toy reindeer in those tiny Christmas dioramas...

...but I digress. They looked as if they knew me. [Shudder].

After the speech, they came up to the head table. "I'm Brian Bergs" (note the "s" at the end; obviously no relation), he said, and it all came rushing back. Brian, his wife Paula and...

...the baby, who just turned 21. And is a committed Young Republican; Brian and Paula done good.

Oh, and Paula's sister, my old college friend? Her daughter (again, someone I last saw as a terrible two) is a ninth-grade girls hoops phenom, just like mom.

There are times it feels like this blog pays me a million dollars a year.