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| The author, not crying at age 2. |
While I was there, I don't remember details. The people who would are no longer around, so I'm going to see where this leads me.
In 1963, fathers were not in the delivery room. My dad wasn't a smoker, but I suspect the waiting room at Condell Memorial Hospital in Libertyville, Illinois was full of smokers Friday evening when I made my debut at 9:25.
At the time my parents lived in Mundelein while Dad worked at Fansteel and mom worked at a bank before I was born. I was baptized at St. Paul's Lutheran Church in Waukegan.
Six months later, we moved to Janesville, Wisconsin. There was a new job waiting for Dad, but I like to think they didn't want risk me becoming a Bear's fan.
The first days and months on this planet were fine, at first. The little boy didn't do much other than sleep, eat, and cry. Then one day, I erupted into prolonged ear-shattering wails, complete with clenched fists, flailing legs, and an unhappy red face. At some point I must have stopped to eat or sleep, but things were not much fun around the Mossner house.
This went on for a while until one autumn Sunday afternoon, Mom turned on the television and sat down with me praying for a few minutes of quiet. As the announcers described the action on the fuzzy black and white screen she realized I wasn't making noise. I was mesmerized by the moving figures.
It worked that afternoon and the next and the one after that. Soon, Mom and Dad joined me on the couch watching the game, cherishing the peace and quiet. That, they told me, is how they became Green Bay Packer fans.
Out of kindness, I suppose, my parents never told me how long I cried or how many years they lived with it.
So nothing unusual happened at my birth... just another run-of-the-mill miracles that happen everyday. I was one of 4,098,020 babies born in 1963, but the only one with the perfect parents. That, I suppose, qualifies as unusual after all.
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