It takes time to figure some things out

My godfather, who I always called "Uncle Stan" was quite a character. Always the storyteller. He was funny and knew how to make people smile and laugh.

One Sunday in the summer of 1964, my family (father, mother, sister - age 6 and me - age 8) drove from our house in Long Beach about 40 miles to Sherman Oaks for lunch and an afternoon visit with my godparents and their kids at their house. It was a wonderful day, not too hot, and as the sun was going down and casting a long, golden light down the street, my family got in our 1964 four-door Chevrolet Impala ready for the drive home. Dad started the engine, had the car in reverse, and was ready to back out the driveway into the street, when Uncle Stan raised his hand for my dad to stop and he ran into the house.

In seconds, he came back and walked directly to my door, the driver's side rear, opened it and gave me a copy of the 45 rpm single record of the Beatles' "I Want to Hold Your Hand" with "Day Tripper" on the flip side.

Unbelieveable, and thank you, Uncle Stan! We played that record over and over -- until it must have been almost thin enough to play one side and hear the song on the other side, too.

Well, thirty years passed, and I was a father myself by that time, and one day, it just struck me. That Sunday in 1964, my Uncle Stan was not giving me a copy of the Beatles "I Want to Hold Your Hand", he was getting rid of his daughter's copy of it.

Well, he knew what he had done, and finally, I had figured it out, too. Man-to-man and father-to-father, there was no need to mention it and I smiled to think that he must have disliked it so much that he resorted to giving it to 8-year-old me to have it out of his house.

Uncle Stan died in 2000. After the services, we gathered at the new house they had moved to in Calabasas to eat and share stories.

When I told my godmother, Aunt Donna, this one, her jaw dropped, she smiled remembering the record exactly and said "That stinker! We tore the house apart looking for that record." Anne, their daughter remembered it perfectly too.

"Harrumph" Uncle Stan would say.