Maggie Monday: Maggie Meets the Dude

Thank you all so much for your sympathies on the loss of our family companions. I extend mine to those of you who are going through similarly tough times with your own furry friends. They may be animals, but their passing is no easier to those of us who loved them.

Okay, on to Maggie.

This is a picture of the dude and me from early in our relationship. That's back when, as a 20something, he got his hair cut twice a year, whether he needed it or not. (Sorry about the scans. I can't find my box of post-1980 photos.) (These are from the "Green Card Album.")

So Maggie meets the dude: my whole family came out to a house in Laguna Nigel during our spring break. We had a lot of adventures, including a trip to Disneyland. There, Maggie introduced the dude to Goofy. (She had asked who his favorite character is and the dude is not a Disney fan, so he just pulled a character out of the hat.) "This is Petah," she says, "He came all the way from Livahpool to meet you." (The dude is from Durham, and was living in the US.)

Dude, me, Sissy, Maggie, and my sainted aunt.
When was I that skinny?
(Don't tell the Fug Girls, but that was a romper.)

Then she bought him a comb. Because he needed a reminder to comb his hair, "He's an absent-minded professah." (How he got to be a professor after a year and a half of grad school, I don't know.) But if you ask my grandmother, we met at and graduated from USCLA to the surprise of both USC and UCLA.