Rebekah's "15 Minutes of Fame", Installment 1

Background:

My parent's live in Middlesex County, N.J.. They've lived in the house they live in now since September '69; nearly 35 years(and 3 area codes, lol)! When they moved into that house, I was 6 and just days away from starting the 1st grade.

As it happens, they live in East Brunswick, the town where the Middlesex County Fair is held each year, during the first week of August. East Brunswick is a big township, but they live within a long-but-doable walking distance(30 minutes?) from the Fairgrounds.

And this is a very good thing, cuz my mom was the co-chariman of the Home Arts Department of the Fair for most of my growing up years. "Back in the day" when the fair's exhibits were mostly in tents, this meant numerous EARLY-morning trips over to the fairgrounds many days of that week each year to poke water out of tent "bellys" to keep it from leaking(or flooding) into the tent and onto the exhibits(a very "in-tents" experience, lol).

But it also meant that she was over there every day of fair week and not just during fair hours either. Being a young-ish kid, I(and my brother) got dragged along with her. In other words, we basically grew up at the fair.

So, I very much wanted to take Rebekah to this fair, at least once. And, since my folks are pro-actively looking at various assisted/senior-living facilities in order to pick one to move into(Dad's 81, Mom's 74), this year might very well have been our last chance to get her there.

Fortunately, she's just the right age to really enjoy and appreciate all the animals. And she's also the right age to enjoy all the cute kiddie rides with the sickeningly high-pitched, maddeningly repetitive horns and other noises on them too.

But, even more fortunately, we GOT HER THERE this year! And, perhaps most fortunately of all, it DIDN'T RAIN while we were there, since it almost ALWAYS rains for ALL of fair week.

So, we got her there. She LUVED the animals(tho she called them all either cat(s) or duck(s), no matter what they were, lol), and she also enjoyed the 2(or was it 3?) rides we went on with her.

We even got my mom on the merry-go-round with her/us. If you know my mom, you understand how rare and special that is. Too bad nobody was on the ground to get a picture of that!

But, speaking of pictures, shortly after my mom bought us each ice cream cones(isn't it wonderful to have grandparents to pay for some of the experiences you want to give your kid but can't really afford yet?), I got approached by a guy who was taking fair pix for the Sentinel; a local weekly paper up there(which, as it happens, I delivered for a few years during HS). He took several pix of Rebekah eating my ice cream cone as I held her in my arms(and I'm NOT looking forward to the day when she's too heavy to do that too either!).

Of course, he didn't know which - if any - of the pix he took of us might or would end up in the paper. But he said we could write or e-mail him for copies of all of them IF one(or more) of them got in the paper.

Well, guess what? One DID!

http://ebs.gmnews.com/News/2004/0805/Front_Page/002.html

I don't think it's the best pic of either of us, but it's ok. And, even tho I like the picture I had of Rebekah & I at the last Phils game at the Vet a lot more than this one, I switched the pic on my yahoo profile from that pic(Phils) to this one(Fair) cuz Becky's changed SO MUCH since last September!

Anyway, I just wanted to share that pic with all of you. Cuz a lot of you don't know me or know what I look like, and even many who know me have never met Becky, so they don't know what she looks like(or what she looks like NOW) either.