I left for Boston University in the Fall of 1973 for my doctorate in Anthropology. Janis and I missed each other, to say NOTHING of not being able to afford the phone calls. Yeah, you paid for a long-distance phone call those days! When I returned to Tallahassee for the winter break she decided to come back to Boston with me. So I met her parents. Boy, THAT is another story! I’ll try to write it soon.

I’m participating in Christmas with them that year. Becky is four years old. They are taking her to play at the Apalachee Elementary School Playground. John, my future father-in-law, takes me aside and asks if I can do him a favor. They had a carport. Its outside wall was a utility room. He opens the door. There’s a Big Wheel in its box.

“Can you put it together for Becky while we have her at the playground, so it’s a Christmas morning surprise?”

“Of Course!”

Fast forward many decades. Becky and I have had a wonderfully warm relationship. She is now full-grown and a very successful professional. When she introduces me to people, she says I am her former brother-in-Law (Janis is her oldest sister) but she sells people she has always really thought of me as her brother.

“And besides, he gave me my first car!”