Category Archives: Family matters

In which we discuss matters of the family.

Red dragons live on top of hills

At the gym yesterday, I noticed that the woman in front of me on the “imaginary bicycle” — as Poppy calls it — was playing some kind of dragon-slaying game. On the bike’s fancy-pantsy screen.

Now, I am not normally a fan of the imaginary bicycle. It hurts my knees, and also I am lazy. But dragon slaying? At the gym? Please know that I was all over that. At least, I said to myself, “If I come back tomorrow, and if that machine is available, I will definitely think about trying it.”

And I did, and it was. So I tried it.

I only “played” for 10 minutes, but it was a fun, fast 10 minutes. And I am so sore right now. There will be dragon slaying in my future.

Say, you know what’s not cool about your computer dying? Aside from the fact that your computer’s dead, I mean. I don’t remember any of my passwords, and now I’m having to reset everything. And then I forget them again by the time I go to log into something again (hello, Facebook), so I have to reset my password everytime I want to log in.

Maybe I should write them down somewhere. But that would require standing up. And my legs hurt. Because of the dragon slaying.

(See, there was a connection! Sort of.)

On the road and hanging by a song

Picture it. The Colonial Inn. Saginaw, Michigan. Spring 1975.

My dad was 22. He was at a nearly empty bar with a girl. There was another couple on the other side of the room, and a trio of guys in the corner. One of the guys left for a moment, came back with a guitar and handed it to one of the others. He started playing and singing a bit, and Dad thought, “Wow, he sounds just like John Denver.”

“I’d just started listening to John Denver,” Dad says, “and I didn’t know what he looked like. But man, he sounded just like him.”

The guy played for about an hour. If he’d known for certain, Dad says, he would’ve bought the guy a drink. But he wasn’t sure.

Until the next day, when he saw in the paper that John Denver was playing at the civic center.