From the September morning on which I entered kindergarten through the May morning on which (still too drunk to have yet commenced being hung over) I graduated college, I had the great good fortune and pleasure to follow my sister, Jill, through school.
Wilma is the penultimate member of Mom and WPK, Sr.'s sextet, and the one who Dad presciently affixed with the sobriquet "Tiger" when she was but a child. She is two years older than I am and was always two grades ahead of me in school. But for 11th and 12th grades at Wardlaw-Hartridge, when she was off at college, she and I had always attended school together. It was an experience I found so jarring that as a high school senior I opted to continue my education at the University of Colorado, Boulder - where she and Joe were beginning their junior years.
I have proven to be the gum that my sister cannot scrape off her shoe. Thirty-plus years after college and five-and-one-half decades after I commenced "Operation Annoying Brother", I smile at the knowledge that we are still as thick as thieves.
She was with me way back when I was a fifteen-year-old high school sophomore who wanted to experience what it felt like to drive so she pulled over into a parking lot, swapped places with me, and let me drive Mom's little red Chevette on the deserted byways of Neshanic Station...and right up into a railroad tie while attempting my first left turn. Irony of all ironies is the son of a man whose secret goal on every trip appeared to be reaching his destination by making nothing but left turns completely screwing the pooch attempting his very first one.
We were together again, with Joe and Margaret, on a Saturday morning in late September on the beach in Bay Head when Sam I Am came perilously close to having Bruce Springsteen ask me my name for the sole purpose of ensuring its proper spelling in the caption of his personal injury lawsuit. We four were running and playing on the beach with Sam and Rita when Bruce and Patti emerged from the water and began making the short walk up the beach to the oceanfront home they had rented. Sam damn near ran Bruce over trying to get by him to say hello to Patti, who helped break any fast-developing tension by immediately bending down and petting Sam.
My relationship with Wilma is one that - to borrow a phrase from Mr. Springsteen - neither time nor memory shall fade away. For that I shall be forever grateful. Today, on her birthday, I am grateful for the fact that Margaret, Giuseppe, Sam, and I shall be able to spend a portion of it with her.
Happy Birthday, Wilma. You are now, as you have always been, my favorite Bad Ass.
Much love always,
Chuck
-AK
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