Happy anniversary, Mom and Dad

Today would have been Mother and Daddy's 70th wedding anniversary. Daddy died more than 38 years ago, and Mother has been gone for 17, but I always stop to remember them on this day. Whatever else ever happens on 14 October in my life, its significance will always be Mother and Daddy's anniversary.

This one started out a bit ironically. The dogs set up a fuss when someone rang our doorbell (Parker sets up a fuss if a doorbell rings on tv), so I rounded them up, pushed Sherman out back, and answered it. The man outside said his name was Gary and he was selling meat out of the back of a pickup truck.

I have no idea why I suckered in to a door-to-door meat salesman (I may be advertising my complication in a stolen-meat scam, or we could die of tainted-meat disease), but I did, provided he let me wake up the chief cook around here, Number One Son—who shares the dude's first name.

I had to rattle NOS out of bed to get him to talk to the guy, and he decided that the meat looked tasty, so I decided to buy. Hey, times are hard, I've been lucky, and the meat really did look tasty. Besides, it was sort of ironic that this guy had the same name as NOS.

Which got weirder. After we decided on the sale, I pulled out my checkbook to pay the dude and needed to remember the date. I never know what day it is in the morning; I sort of keep up with days of the week at the office, but my life is so automated I almost don't recognize the day of the month even there. But 14 October is Mother and Daddy's anniversary, and I was writing a check to a man who had the same name as my son.

Only not quite. The dude asked me to make out the check to Gary Frank. I said, "You're kidding." I don't think he heard that because he didn't respond to it, but the irony was even bigger: NOS was named for his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather, but none of them uses the middle name from which we derive Garry. No, that name came marginally from the name of the variety-show host who introduced Carol Burnett to the world, a man name Garry Moore.

But mostly it came from the name of the best man and our wedding—my ex's best friend at the time, Gary Franks.

Way too weird for a Wednesday.