One Thousand Nine Hundred Sixty-Nine....

is the number of today's post.  It is also the year my first nephew was born.  Since Toni was the first grandchild there was much excitement...which was good for me, too.

The evening before we had our annual FHA/FFA field trip.  I was a mere fifteen years old.  It was always exciting to participate in these bus trips with all your friends   I was especially proud of this trip because I was wearing a new short jump suit with a Nehru Collar and a zipper up the entire front. (We won't talk about how much I detested setting zippers, that's another story).

This is sorta what it looked like only much shorter, much tighter with a Nehru collar and cap sleeves.  Man, I worked hard to get that sewn in time for our trip and I was feeling beautiful.

To make a long story short.  The guy I had my eye on liked it too.  Come on, people, remember those bus trips, kissing in every seat and the teachers did not see or pretended they did not see....I got my first hickey!!!  I did not know what it was.  I just knew it was a visible mark that would give my  father a legal right to kill me. The zipper stayed in place...both of ours.

I made it safely home, safely through breakfast because I wore a turtle neck sweater to the breakfast table.  Thank goodness and good luck, Bev went into labor while I was at school.  I stayed with an old family friend who made homemade fudge and mentioned nothing of my "mark".

Someone told me the toothpaste trick and it had disappeared by the time the family looked at me again.  Christopher Kyle Antonio Day was born saving my ass and he keeps on being a special nephew.

Toni is home again after a two year work assignment in Alaska.  World traveled and wise, a father now with a beautiful smart daughter Stormi who is juggling college, two jobs and life at twenty-one.

Thank you Toni for being you.  Thank you blogger friends for being with me through 1969 posts.