We Weren't Ready for Prime Time

Dear John,

 

It's been a lovely spring day, just a bit out of place on the calendar. It was 50 and sunny here. We may drown in all this mud and melting snow. But it's been a treat.

 

I spent the day working on Christmas presents for the celebration with Jen on Saturday. You'll get details about the presents later. I stopped long enough to watch a special on the first five years of Saturday Night Live - the Not Ready For Prime Time Players. It was fun to see the bits of the early shows, and made me think about you.

 

I remember watching SNL together in your dorm every week. It ended at 1 AM, which was when open house hours ended. So you had to miss the end or watch it in the downstairs lobby, which was always packed to overflowing. So Heaven and earth were moved for SNL - they gave us fifteen extra minutes on Saturday nights. Sometimes fifteen minutes wasn't enough for three elevators to get everybody down from  twenty-two floors, but they gave us all the time we needed.

 

And that shows just how important SNL was: UK changed open house hours for it. The only other time those hours were altered was during the blizzard at the beginning of the 1978 spring semester. We were stunned at the time, and I find myself marveling at it thirty-five years later. It's quite a compliment to the show.

 

Good memories. And good times. I loved you so much then, and love you even more now. I wish you had open house hours in Heaven. But I would never want to leave, and I would never ask you to come back here. So we can only pray that I get to come soon. Maybe before this New Year starts?

 

Packed and ready to go,

Joan.