Ticket to Europe

The night David and I returned from our camping trip, Wally sat down at the dinner table and said, “Did you have a good time?”

“We sure did,” I said, “Didn’t we, David?”

David said, “I saw a bear in the campground in Pennsylvania.”

(We didn’t tell how the ranger called out, “Get away from there, kid. That’s a wild animal.”)

David said,. “We visited Betty Rahn. I saw where I was born.”.

“You remember, Wally, how much fun Betty and I had when we lived in Birmingham.”

Wally grunted an assent.

I couldn’t resist. I said, “Of course I would rather have gone to Paris.”

The next night as Wally came to dinner, he put down on the table in front of me two tickets on Lufthansa Airlines to Frankfurt, Germany. (Our older son Karl was stationed there with the Army.) Wally said, “It will cost you $100 a piece to cancel these.”

I grabbed up the tickets. “Cancel them? I’m going.”

Wally:“You’ll lose your job if you take another vacation so soon.”

Me: “I don’t care.”

Wally: “I can’t go with you. I have important business here. I can’t just take off and go to Europe.”

Me: “I’ll take David.”

Wally: “You’d take him out of school?”

Me: “To go to Europe? Of course I will.”

That’s how I came to make my first trip on my own to Europe with a 13-year-old kid.”