"When you and Daddy were, um, first..."

"Yes, honey bun?"

"When you were first getting together, did you have any doubts?"

"Oh, sure, everyone has doubts. But your dad and I have been together a long time."

"When did you first know? I mean really know, you know?"

"Oh, sometimes I think I've always known. But I can tell you when I really knew I knew. Seventh grade. Mr. Joyce's English class."

"It happened in school?"

"It happened everywhere. But the knowing started there. We had to do these oral presentations from a one page report on careers. What we wanted to be when we grew up. Part of it had to be from an interview with someone in that field we'd chosen for our future."

"Oh? What did you want to be?"

"A nurse. Pretty original, huh?"

"You'd have made a good nurse."

"Maybe. What I really wanted to be was a cowboy, or maybe a veterinarian, but I figured a nurse was the next best thing. Besides, I could interview your Great Grandma Marcy—she was a nurse. I remember I had two freshly sharpened pencils and a stenographer's notebook along with me when I asked the questions. Grandma Marcy was very pleased to be interviewed. Of course I don't suppose being a nurse back when she was a nurse was exactly like it is today, or even like it was when I was in seventh grade. But I was very proud of my little paper. I thought I did a good job."

"So what does this have to do with knowing about Dad? Did he want to be a doctor?"

"Oh, no. He wanted to be a baseball player. He had his heart set on it."

"He was pretty good, wasn't he?"

"He was. I think he still holds a couple of batting records from high school. In Little League he hit all kinds of home runs and things. Back then hardly anyone hit home runs in Little League."

"So his paper was on being a baseball player?"

"Yup. The only thing was, he was too scared to do the interview. Not that there were any star baseball players living in our neighborhood who he could interview. None that I knew of, anyway."

"So what did he do?"

"He interviewed Babe Ruth."

"Babe Ruth? Really?"

"Yup. He made up the interview. We were doing the presentations alphabetically by first name, so Joe came right before me. It was a riot. I remember part of it. Joe said that according to Babe Ruth one of the many neat thing about being a baseball player was not only did you get to play the best game in the world for money, but the club took care of buying your spikes and baseball gloves and baseball bats. I remember how nervous Joe was giving his speech, but how enthusiastic. I could really imagining him talking to Babe Ruth about baseball. And then when he was done he blushed a little and turned all bashful when he handed Mr. Joyce the paper."