And it's NOT because there's been nothing happening.
On the 3rd, we had Parent-Teacher conferences. Andrew's was quick and easy. Mr. Edwards said, "He's a great kid, doing well in his studies. And I do silly things on purpose just to hear his wonderful laugh." Emily's took a little longer. Not because of any problems, but because I talked too long with teachers that had Jeff and Adam. Brought them up to date on my two son's doin's and on some of their classmates. Absolutely MADE Mrs. O'Hare's day when I told her that Mike Barber was a middle school science teacher in Charlottesville. NOTHING makes a good teacher happier than learning that one of her students followed in her footsteps.
The next day my son in State College called and said, "Hey, Dad. Wanna go to the PSU/Ohio State game?" I told him there were two conditions. The weather had to be good enough - as in no rain and temperature above 40 - for me to ride the Honda and the seats couldn't be in one of the nosebleed sections. The seats were good and the weather promised to be almost balmy. So Friday morning I headed to State College. With my frequent stops, it's a 7 hour ride. But it was in the 50's by noon and a great ride.
Friday night the frat brother who had the extra tickets invited us to join him and his family at The Tavern which is an old Penn State tradition. It's where you take your parents when they come to visit. I took mine there 40+ years ago. We went there with Jeff. Jeff and Ann's rehearsal dinner was there. And then we learned the real reason we'd been invited. Everybody else was driving in Friday evening and the Tavern doesn't take reservations. Never has, probably never will. So, "Would we mind going down early and getting our names on the list to eat around 8:30?" Of course not. Jeff called around 5 and the lady said,"Oh, if you're here by 7 it should be no problem." So we went down around 6:30 and it was a complete zoo. PACKED shoulder to shoulder. Took 5 minutes to fight our way to the check in. The greeter said, "We're seating #48 and you'll be number 165 with seating around 10 or 10:30. But wait, I need to check and see if we're even giving out any more numbers." He came back and said that the chef said it was OK to give out a few more numbers, so we could plan on eating around 10. Then a man came up and said, "What did they tell you?" When I told him "10 o'clock, number 165", he said, "We're not going to wait any more. Here, you can have our number 94." So we found an empty table - another little miracle in itself - and waited for the gang. Had time for one drink with them and then we sat down to dinner at exactly 8:30. We had a wonderful, leisurely meal and just as we got up to leave a few minutes after 10 we heard them call number 165. Thank you, kind gentleman, whoever you are. And remember, it always pays to wear your Penn State colors. Because he said he wouldn't have approached me if I'd been wearing red !
Well, you know what happened at the game. We played poorly and lost. But in a stadium of 110,000, we sat down next to two of Tom's frat brothers. Not only brothers, but from the same class. More in-betweens every where I look. They had a great talk while sort of watching the game.
I posted on Facebook that I was in State College for the weekend to see if any of my old PSU friends might respond. No one did - except Marie, the young lady we met in Jamaica this summer. She joined us on Sunday for a hike up Mt Nittany. And she got her first motorcycle ride as part of the day.
AND she has video to prove it !
A wonderful day, great friends
AND Marie hit it off so well with my grandkids that Tom and Ann hired her the very next day to babysit. So they've got a new "daytime" babysitter, Marie has some local friends for when she wants to escape campus life and she has some spending money.
All because we said, "HI" to a couple of strangers in Jamaica.
Tinkerbell lives !
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