N: I'm concerned about your mental stability. And your children shouldn't encourage you.

G: They're only showing their intelligence and perceptiveness.

N: Chips off the ol' blockhead?

G: Your term, not mine.

N: And you still haven't told me what happened your first year at Utah State and why you didn't finish it.

G: Well, Gloria, . . .

N: Was she number two or number three?

G: Who's counting?

N: I probably should have. You were saying . . . ?

G: Well, there were these cheer leaders, twins I met after the first Utah State home football game, Tamara and Suzanne McCoy . . . oops, I may just have made an unintended disclosure!

N: You mean why you hemmed and hawed after each of the births of our youngest girls, when I asked, "Why do you want to name her that?" You had a thing going with the twin cheerleaders?

G: ACKshully, (That's an exact quote from the grankid who eats a full pound of bacon for breakfast when she stays at our house.) ACKshully, the twins were not quite what I would have wanted to take home to momma. They had potty mouths like you never heard . . . similar, I might say, to those who became their namesakes. Our youngest learned all she knows from her loving sister and best friend . . . except for a few choice nouns and adjectives she picked up in the movie business . . . and it started, you may recall, the day in Cottage Grove when we brought the newborn Suzie home from the hospital. Tamara, age three, met us at the front door. I was carrying Suzie in one arm, the other holding you upright. Tamara, who had, since birth, been called, "Daddy's dolly," said, "Where did THAT come from? And don't give me that crap about a stork!" A bright child with a highly developed vocabulary, she added, ". . . and how do we get rid of it?"

N: She didn't say that!

G: Well, something close to that. May I remind you of the day we found her at the upstairs window of our two story house in Cottage Grove, holding her infant sister out of the window and, when we asked her what she had in mind, replied, "She had a diaper malfunction and I was just airing her out." The encouraging factor in that episode was Tam's use of the pronoun, "she," instead of, "it." Their relationship progressed from there to what it is today, a long and rocky road. Speaking of our house in Cottage Grove, it was a lot like our house in Bly.

N: A two story house in the country with a white picket fence was like a one story house in town with a wire fence? Yes, I understand perfectly.

G: Well, they were both white . . . that is until after the fire in Bly.

N: I'm amazed at your ability to move so quickly back and forth over large expanses of time.

G: I'm brilliant! Write that down.

N: Also impressive is your ability always to have the last word.

G: You know, of course, how to win any recorded argument?

N: Write both sides yourself?

G: Heh, heh.