Happy Father's Day

My wife and I eloped.

We got married on a Friday afternoon in the fall back in 2000. It happened to be that we got married on a football weekend, but fortunately, Notre Dame was playing at West Virginia. If it hadn't been an away game, there's no guarantee that I would have shown up for the ceremony. There would have been less chance that I showed up sober.

I'm a real catch, I tell you what.

Anyway, we didn't tell any of our families that we were getting married. We decided to do it and enjoy our honeymoon--which was really just sex in the top room of the Holiday Inn in lovely downtown South Bend. There was even a duck flying around the top floor of the hotel--or at least something that sounded like a duck. I swear it wasn't my ass.

The following day we decided we needed to call our families and tell them about our nuptials. I decided to go first--only after I watched the first half of the West Virginia/Notre Dame game.

My father was not at home at the time--he was out running some errands or something. So, I got my mother. I broke the news to her, and then suffered through thirty minutes of questions as to why I would do this, why I would take a chance with my education, and why I would marry someone that I had just met a few months prior and whom I barely knew. Fortunately, my father came home toward the end of my mother's aural attack, and she called him over to talk to me.

Mom: Your son has something to tell you.
Dad: Hey, son! What's up?
Me: [Mrs. MJenks} and I got married yesterday!
Dad: Huh. So, you, like, eloped then, huh?
Me: Yeah, we sure did.
Dad: Alright. How's Notre Dame doing?

This is why I love you, dad.

Happy Father's day.