Terror Train Of Thought

Have you ever had one of those terrifying trains of thought? You know, the ones that start with a seemingly innocuous thought that then career hither thither and yon until they end-up in a strange, completely unforeseen destination... I had one of those "Oh-No!" moments last week whilst I was in Minnesota on vacation.

Actually, it started on my way to Minnesota. I cannot remember why, exactly I started down this road, but I was driving along thinking of the thirteen years I had been making this trip from Denver, the six years I had been making it from Memphis before that and the years I made it from Florida before that... Wow! That's a LOT of driving!

I've been traveling to see Dad in Minnesota since 1983! That's a lot of time since Dad and Flo left Florida for Minnesota! That, of course, led to my mental calculation on age. That means when I started this, Dad was my age! (Younger, really!)

I was sharing this little tidbit while scraping horseradish with my cousins and got incredulous responses. Sure, they can be incredulous... I'm older than all my cousins. So I shared another one.

"Remember," I started "when my family used to come up to Minnesota and we'd play hide-and-seek while the grandparents held court and our parents all sat around drinking in Grandma and Grandpa's driveway? Well... by my calculation, we're all older than our parents were back then... some of us are as old as our grandparents were back then!" The crowd went hush.

"Think of it! We are those old guys drinking in the driveway!" I think they all got the idea... here we were sitting in Dad's driveway... The next generation was off playing with the dogs (or doing whatever the equivalent of playing hide-and-seek is these days). We were the old folks now! The Schnapps was passed around the table one more time.

One difference, our parents had style!

Wherever you are today, I hope all your thoughts are happy ones!

 Don Bergquist - October 10, 2008 - Lakewood, Colorado, USA