HAPPY BIRTHDAY, KITTY

TODAY IS THE KITTY'S BIRTHDAY. She is 39 again. People ask me how I met this feline. It was in 1963 in Jamaica, West Indies, and I was on vacation there, at a hotel on the North Coast. Being the "filled to the brim with testosterone" guy I was in those days, I had my eye peeled and followed my pointer toward feminine pulchritude. There she was, with her two cousins. A vision of exotic beauty. I was immediately smitten, and I knew "this was the one." For you guys out there it was a teenager going to a car lot and among all the gray sedans, there sat a red corvette convertible, its engine rumbling, with shiny chrome, and real leather upholstery. Suffice it to say, in those days, test drives were not commonplace in courtships as they might have been in buying a car. You basically had to go on the paint and the sound of the radio. Anyway, the prospects of traveling down the road of life with this beauty was too awesome to resist. We spent some days together and then had to part company as I went back to the USA and had to leave my "Island Girl" behind.

The rest of the story is kind of interesting but I will save it for another day. Anyway it was 47 years ago (wait, the math doesn't add up) that I spent some time in the summer on an island with the woman who would one day become "The Kitty" my wife. Here I am with her on another island almost half a century later and it still feels like the first time I laid eyes on her on the North Coast of Jamaica. Amazing.