Some of you like food-related stories, and this line is good for one. When I was a teen, we used to meet with cousins for weekend campouts at Lake Lopez. Dad would get off duty at 5 p.m. on Friday, and find the pop-up camper loaded and ready to go. He'd take a shower, slip into shorts and loafers, and we'd head out.
We'd camp out, fish (with nil success, to this day I can't quite get the concept of fish). We were a group of girls (baby would be at the camp-site with mom, and us girls were in our teens), my two cousins were boys in between us in age.
We were told to be "home" at a certain time, but let it get away from us. Holy moly. We're an hour late. We ran to our camp site and my mother (I was the eldest) took me literally into the woods and took me to task. No, she didn't beat me silly, she presented me with a truth I did not know. One cousin was a diabetic.
She simply told me the truth: Be where you are supposed to be, when you promise to be there. Period.
Of course I had no idea that this cousin had health problems. But I did learn a lesson. I'm very careful about being where I say I will be, when I say I'll be there. As the eldest, I was supposed to watch my watch. We lucked out this time, but what would I have done had my cousin gotten sick? Of course I wouldn't have had a clue.
To this day I'm a bit anal about being where I say I will be, when I say I'll be there. If I think I can't do it, I'm up-front. It scared me silly to think my cousin's health was in my hands. He recovered. I learned my lesson.