My late husband Arnie and I met at age eighteen and married within the year. Being so young, we fought like name-calling little kids when we had disagreements. One weekend while playing Scrabble, we disagreed about a word I used. My old, ragged dictionary came out to prove a point. In a huff, Arnie took the thick tome and wrote on it, “Kathy The Weird-One Altmann”.

I didn’t know what made me angrier: that he called me weird, or that he used my maiden name, or that he wrote on a book! We came from similar backgrounds, but we were very different in nature. Arnie always insisted that my family had a weird sense of humor.  He held to this point of view right to the end.