Beware of friends like me. I’m the kind of friend that you invite to dinner and I turn around and invite the whole neighborhood.

Not that I expect anyone to believe this, but our daughter Mary, the German pianist, will be 50 years old in November. How can this be, when I’m only 55 and Dave 60?

It was not, as I feared, the floods in Wisconsin and Kentucky last month that kept me from hearing from my friend Viki. She probably didn’t even notice them.

Ah, the books saved for the occasion. CDs stacked in easy reach. The laptop sharing a bolstered bed with Webster and Bartlett in case the muse should strike, and the promises of catered dinners from about a dozen friends.

Remember when you were a kid and your family decided it was time to buy a new car? You picked out a… oh, say, a Ford Falcon, ordered it in metallic blue, and waited for delivery.

Where do these people come from, and how do they know when we are at our most vulnerable? When in the grip of the medical industry, even if for only a few weeks, one also learns that most of the ads in evening news are directed at oneself. Who’d have thought I’d ever care which brand of artificial knee has advantages over another or what granny panty gives enough protection but not too much?

The trip appeared jinxed from the very beginning. The weather was hot and traffic was heavy, although it could have been worse heading north through town late on a Monday morning. I drove the first leg, and got us to Greensboro, N.C., where we left I-85 and latched onto U.S. Highway 29.

“What made you decide to wash all the knick-knacks?”

“They’re not knick-knacks. They’re mementoes.”

“They look like knick-knacks to me.”

Leesburg, Va.: “Calm anticipation” is the only way I can describe the feeling here. I’ve been involved in a wedding or two and by the time they’re less than 24 hours away, there’s usually a degree of hysteria just under a surface that is often very thinly veneered.

The drought – one of the worst ever – is on everyone’s mind this summer.

How dry is it?

It’s so dry that turtles are trying to drink from the bird bath.

“Was it worth it?” they asked.

Was it worth standing in line for two-and-a-half hours to get a dozen barely legible words scribbled in the fly page of a book I hadn’t even seen reviewed?

Call it expediency, but I’m taking advantage of (1) a family crisis, (2) the feedback I get from readers who tell me they love grandchildren stories, plus (3) the fact that the column planned for this week was only half-finished when the phone rang.

Seems like I wrote this column once before, but I promise you, this one is different. This one’s about Farmer Pope and why he’s shutting down his farm stand.

(Editor’s note: this column was originally published in June 1979.)

There it is again, that uncalled-for glimpse of life in perspective. It must be the great plan of things that graduations and Father’s Day come close together, another milestone and that sense of awe in having been much bigger than my own life.

There should be some rule in nature that gives grandparents an extra boost of strength when their grandbabies are at their fastest. Instead, just at the time the little ones are adding speed to cunning, their seniors are being slowed by arthritis or some other geriatric malady.

Somewhere in Heaven a mother is smiling.

We knew Abigail was graduating from college last weekend, but somehow we missed the fact that we were invited to attend.

Couple of weeks ago, I wrote about encyclopedias and how outdated they seem today. I apologize for some confusion I wrote into that column. Striving for a tone of irony, I recounted how quickly (we thought) we could access information in the encyclopedias, cross-referencing and all, compared with the pre-encyclopedic days when we had to drive 10 miles to the nearest library.

The day starts with the sound of blue jays mobbing a crow. When the crow gets tired of being the mobbee, he spies a Cooper’s hawk, calls the rest of his family in, and becomes the mobber.

Anybody want a set of encyclopedias? They’re yours for the asking, in near-perfect condition. They’ve taken up space in a small side table for, gee, I don’t know how many years, and if you think they’re useless in the 21st century, you just might be right.

What’s the difference between cartoons and comics? No, this is not a trick question.

Comics, according to one source, “are a series of drawings that tell the sequences of a story or an incident in picture form.” These are what we used to call “funnies,” because they were originally meant to be funny.

Here we were, on a beautiful Saturday morning, doing what we do best: sipping coffee, reading the paper, putting off reality as long as possible. Haven’t cleaned the porches and decks, and we’re staying indoors out of the pine pollen.

A remarkable story emerged from the mists of history recently, all the more timely to be told at Yom Hashoah, the annual remembrance of the Holocaust.

Stony, I remember writing a piece about you when you became chief. I asked you if you had a brief bio because I knew there would be a lot of military references in it, and I don’t speak militarese. I can’t find it now, nor the story I wrote, but I well remember, it was several tightly typed pages long.

Spring has sprung. The grass has riz. I wonder where the birdies is.

Is it just me, or did this spring kinda pounce on us when our backs were turned? From freezing to fabulous in a matter of hours. Honestly, it is no exaggeration to say that some of the trees, the Bradford pears especially, bloomed overnight.

There’s going to be a wedding in our family. Abigail, the eldest of our daughter Jean’s bunch, will be getting married on July 14, in Leesburg, Va. The lad she’s marrying is tall, good-looking and has a good job. He has also fended off the urging of his would-be father-in-law, Brian, who met him at the door whenever he came calling, with questions: “What are your intentions toward my daughter?” “What’s the status of this courtship?” and, “Have you set a date yet?”

Not that I meant to do it, but I’ve proven that one cannot safely or effectively combine cell phone usage with other routine activities. And I believe it has nothing to do with distraction and everything to do with the fact that the human brain can do only one thing at a time.

Gone. It was gone. Two hours of work – gone.

My editor at Fayette Woman had challenged me on matters of punctuation, possessive plurals specifically, and I took the bait. She gave me one more chance to get it right by letting me proofread it myself.

When an experience is shared it is magnified. I’ve written often of our travels, especially in Europe, and people tell me they appreciate my sharing because they too love the continent’s antiquities, or famous art galleries, or its music.

Shortly after a series of windstorms ravished middle and southeastern America last month, a similar anomaly struck the European continent. Mary was in her nearly outfitted new apartment in Mannheim, and could not get back to Gelsenkirchen, and Rainer could not get to Mannheim.

There is no doubt that the photo of the eternally embracing couple will remain printed on my mind just as surely as in the newspaper I’m holding. I’ve read and reread the story, and I’ve cross-checked with other sources. They all say pretty much the same thing.