Chapter 1
"Hey Unca Tom, whassup?"
I was eight, well almost eight - actually I was seven years and eight months old, and Lisa-Marie was only six and a half when I first met her. The uncle bit? Well, her new step dad was my oldest brother, Joe. He was older than I was by seventeen years, and he'd married a woman who had a daughter already. A daughter who was almost as old as I was and in hardly any time, she'd become a royal pain in my butt!
Her mother, Pam, thought that Lisa-Marie calling me Unca Tom was cute and she encouraged it, maybe Joe did too. Anyway that's what she called me, all the time, even after she started going to the same school as I did that fall. So to even things out, I'd call her Baby-Lisa, then I'd bend my thumb inside my fist and make smacking and sucking noises as I kissed my knuckle. Even that didn't get to her, she'd just giggle and bat her eyes at me. How could you stay mad at someone who just wouldn't get annoyed with you?
My brother's farm was just down the road from Dad's, so we rode together on the bus to school. The first day she went to school, my brother Joe told me in no uncertain terms that I was to make sure she was okay and to look out for her. Then of course she decided that she had to sit with me which got me teased by all the other kids. Luckily it was only a few days before she made friends with a girl her age and she moved to sit with her new friend. It was funny, I missed having her sit beside me even if she was a pain in the butt at times.
I still had to be her protector though, guys liked to pull her long blonde pigtails and tease her to make her blush. So of course every once in a while I had little pushing matches with some of the guys if either Lisa-Marie or I thought their teasing went a bit too far. Mostly, after a while, the rest of the kids treated us as if we were sister and brother, so it wasn't too bad. At times she'd get dressed up all frilly and she didn't seem the same, that was when I really didn't stick around her much.
It was funny though, she was just about as good as I was at catching tadpoles down at the creek and she didn't mind getting dirty. She even liked to just sit back and look at the clouds as they drifted overhead in the summer heat. And in the wintertime, she liked to flop on her back in the fresh snow to make snow angels or she'd help build snow men. At Christmas and for each other's birthdays, we always tried to get each other the best gifts we could and then pretend that our moms had made us get something nice.
And mostly, once she got through the first grade, she stopped calling me Unca Tom around other people. She reserved that name for times when she wanted to tease me and get me annoyed.
I remember one day when I was fourteen and just going into grade eight. I was talking to some friends when Lisa-Marie came running up with her blouse torn. She was crying, but I could see she was mad too. She told me a new kid who'd just started at the school had come up to her and pushed her into a corner. He'd kissed her and stuck his tongue in her mouth, then his hand had slipped up under her blouse and she'd ripped it getting away from him.
She didn't get a chance to tell me any more. I was already running off to find the kid.
He was bigger than I was and when he saw me coming, he didn't wait for me to say or do anything, he just started punching. He hit me one good lick on the face, then I got my hands on him. I wasn't much of a fighter, but after years of helping out on the farm, I was strong. I just grabbed hold of him, picked him up, and threw him like I would a bale of hay. Then I just keep coming after him. Each time I caught him, he'd hit me once or twice, but as soon as I could get my hands on him, I'd pick him up and throw him again. Sometimes he'd land on his feet, but sometimes he wouldn't and if he fell down, I'd grab whatever I could get my hands on to fling him around so that I could get him into position to throw him again.
After I'd thrown him around five or six times, he was doing his best to get away, but I just kept following him, catching him and tossing him again. Finally he ran into the school and into a classroom. I was acting like a collie dog herding a sheep into a corner with him playing the part of the sheep when a teacher separated us. That's when Lisa-Marie came running up and told the teacher what the other kid had done. Of course both Billy and I were in big trouble, so our parents got called. Lisa-Marie made such a fuss about it that her Mom got called too. All three of us kids had to sit and wait in the principal's office.
Thinking he was safe there, Billy waited until the principal wasn't looking and then he made a rude gesture with his hand at Lisa-Marie and me. I shifted forward like I was going to jump at him, but he squawked and ran for the door. By the time the principal had looked up, it was Lisa-Marie who was on her feet and her right hand was balled into a fist. Of course the principal told Lisa-Marie to quit bullying the kid.
That set off my temper. I showed the principal the gesture the kid had made and the kid smirked when the principal told me that I was being rude. Unfortunately for the kid, the school secretary had seen what was going on in the principal's office through an open door and told him the true story. So Lisa-Marie and I got separated from the kid and were made to sit in the secretary's office to wait for our parents to come.
Since the kid lived in town, his mom showed up first and we could hear her from the secretary's office. She started to whine and complain the moment she came in and just didn't stop. She was certain that the whole world picked on her and on her precious son Billy. She was sure that absolutely no one understood what she had to go through, being a single mother and all. She had moved to this town to get Billy away from hooligans like me who beat up on her poor little boy and now look at this mess, it was happening all over again.
Then Billy blew it. He told her to "Shut the fuck up, you silly bitch," but she just ignored him and kept whining away.
I just stared. Sure I'd heard the 'F' word before, but I'd never said it in front of a woman and I certainly wouldn't have said it to my mother.
When the principal told Billy to watch his tongue, Billy really lost his cool. I was actually having a language lesson, one that included words I had never even heard before. Unfortunately, the school secretary put an end to that by closing the door into the principal's office and the sound of his outburst was muffled too much to make out his words clearly.
To make a long story short, Billy got expelled, while I got a three-day suspension from school. It was strange though, that night we had all my favourite foods for supper and somehow, not long afterward I got a brand-new bike. Pam, my brother Joe's wife, bought it for me, telling me it was for a few jobs I had done to help her out, but I was certain it was really for fighting that bully for being mean to Lisa-Marie that day.
My brother Joe and I also got free enrollment in a self defence class that had just started in town. The funny thing was that neither of us had even thought about it and none of our family even knew the place was going to open. We certainly hadn't planned on taking any courses there, but being a bit on the frugal side, we weren't about to turn down a gift either.
The one thing that I had proven to me in that class was that I wasn't a fighter. Well, I did learn that there are better ways to fight a boxer than getting your face beaten to a pulp while getting close enough to overpower him. I guess I did learn to protect myself a bit and maybe that was all that I really needed to learn.
One other thing changed as well, I realised that day that Lisa-Marie was growing into a very pretty young woman. I guess growing up with her underfoot all the time, I just hadn't noticed that she was growing up too. I think she started thinking differently about me as well, although I'm not sure of that. Somehow though, things were never the same between us after that day. In some ways we seemed closer, but in other ways, we seemed to have become more shy with one another.
Over the next three years it seemed we spent less time with each other and yet somehow we got closer. I know, that doesn't make sense, but thinking about it now, what happened was that when we were together, we spent less time teasing and jousting and more time actually talking and listening to each other.
At the same time it seemed that I became more shy around other girls while Lisa-Marie became a tease and a flirt with almost all the guys, yet neither of us was going out with anyone. Oh, we weren't totally abstinent, I did take a girl to what we called 'our junior prom' at the end of the year in grade nine, but that was a total flop and any other dates that I went on weren't much better. I know Lisa-Marie went to her junior prom with someone and I know she went to a few shows and dances with others, but neither of us really got involved with anyone for long nor with real feeling.
The summer before I went into my last year in high school, my Uncle Silas had an accident and was laid up for almost two months. He was a bachelor who lived about fifty miles from us and he needed help, but he lived far enough away that a trip back and forth each day was out of the question.
Since I was on summer holidays, I took on the job of staying with him to help him out and do his farm work. I'd often helped him out in the past with some jobs because he was alone on the farm, but this time I had to do pretty well everything. Until he was able to get around well on his crutches, I even had to do most of the housework as well as the farm work. I got paid for what I was doing because he had some kind of insurance, but he was family and I'd like to think I'd have done the same thing even if I hadn't been paid.
I worked hard that summer and I knew that I was doing as good a job as I could. It was the first time that I'd been away from home though and I think I worked harder than I needed to just to calm the feelings of homesickness that I felt. I think Uncle Silas knew what I was going through, but he didn't say anything. In fact, he never talked much, but he managed to show his appreciation in a lot of small ways and I grew to like him and his farm. Still, I really did enjoy it when Mom and Dad started to show up on occasional weekends to spend a day with Uncle Silas and me after I'd been there a while. When I think about it now, I think they waited as long as rhey did to come visit so that I'd be over the worst of my homesickness before I saw them again.
By the end of that summer, I knew I had changed. I was a lot more confident in myself and yet I felt a lot more cautious in some ways. I think that summer turned me from a boy into a man, but it was strange, the last week I was there was the hardest. For some reason I wanted to be back home even more than I had when I'd been the most homesick. I couldn't put my finger on a reason, but that last week I grew more and more anxious to leave as each day of the week passed.
On the last morning I was at Uncle Silas' I'd woken up feeling pretty darn proud of myself because I knew I'd done a good job of looking after the place. At the same time I knew Uncle Silas was pleased from the way he'd been acting toward me. When I got downstairs that morning, he'd met me at the breakfast table with a smile on his face.
"Tommy, ya done a hell of a job and I want to say thanks." He held out his hand and shook mine. "After breakfast and the chores, I got a little surprise for ya."
Uncle Silas didn't talk much, so when he simply poured me a coffee and put a plate of bacon and eggs on the table, I really didn't know what to expect. However, I was eighteen, I was hungry, and there was breakfast on the table. So I curbed my curiosity and filled my empty belly. After breakfast, I went out to the barn, milked the cow, fed the chickens and did the other little farmyard chores for the last time. Then I went back to the house to wash up and grab my suitcase, expecting Uncle Silas to give me a ride home in his pickup truck.
Instead, he just smiled and led me across the yard to an old shed. Throwing open the doors, he waved me inside. Sitting in the dark shed was something covered by a light tarp, then he grabbed the tarp and pulled it off. There sat a dark blue, 1963 Chevy Impala hardtop. Even though I'd worked around the place for years, I hadn't even known that car was there.
There must have been quite a story behind that car, but I still don't know the exact details. I do know that when Uncle Silas was younger, he hadn't been as careful with his money as he grew later in life. I know now that he'd been dating and had bought this car to try to impress a woman and I can guess that he'd had his heart broken. He had never married after all and I found out afterward that the car had sat up on blocks for about twenty years. Other than that, neither Uncle Silas, nor Dad would tell me anything.
"Bought this when I wasn't all that much older than you, but I ain't had no use for it for years. Dunno why I kept it." He shrugged his shoulders. "Now these days, I figure a young guy like you needs a car. Had a mechanic come and haul it to town to go over it for ya, so I know it's mechanically sound. Got new tires, full of gas, new license and the insurance is paid. The transfer slip is in your name and in the glove box. Here's the keys." He handed them to me and I thought sure I could see a tear in his eye. "This is sorta a way o' showing ya my thanks fer all ya done fer me."
I was standing there trying to stammer out a thank you, but he just waved a hand, then limped away toward his fields. I was left standing there with a set of keys in my hand and they belonged to a car that I'd never seen before. I somehow knew that Uncle Silas didn't want to talk about it and what with the way he was acting, I decided that he probably would feel best if I simply left. I went back to the house, got my suitcase and hopped in my 'new' car. Then I slowly drove the fifty miles that took me home.
On the way I did a lot of thinking, but being young, most of my thoughts were about what a difference this car was going to mean to me. Not only did I have a car, but I had a little bit of money to keep it up and run it. Oh my, was that going to change my life. First off, a car meant I was mobile. I wouldn't have to borrow the truck from Dad to go out. I didn't have to stay home on Friday night if I didn't want to. I wasn't going to have to ride the bus to school every day. It meant I was free. I was mobile. One other thing that I realised was that my dating life would be improved as well.
Well, that's what I expected to happen. But what actually happened was weird.
First off, when I pulled into the yard, Mom and Dad met me with huge hugs, then they insisted that we had to go for a ride in my new car. Of course we ended up at my brother Joe's house. We'd hardly gotten stopped and out of the car when the door burst open and Lisa-Marie came running across the yard.
I'll swear she left the ground ten feet away from me and tackled me so hard that I almost fell over. Then I was being hugged and kissed multiple times as she wrapped herself around me, wriggling and squirming as if she was trying to get closer than it was possible to be. All I could do was hold her and blush bright red as all the rest of my family laughed and teased me. Then they went inside, leaving Lisa-Marie and me alone in the driveway.
Once we were alone, she seemed to calm down in one way, yet at the same time her mouth opened and . . .
"Oh God it's good to see you. I've missed you so much. Did you miss me? How is Uncle Silas? I wanted to come see you, but I couldn't get away. We've been so busy because we were all doing stuff and you weren't here to help. You must have worked awfully hard. Why didn't you come home at least once all summer? You look so good. I've really missed having you around. Did you miss me? I like your new car. Are you going to take me for a ride in it?" She rattled off, machine gun style, then finally she seemed to slow down. "Are you okay? Has the cat got your tongue?"
"Hi Lisa." I grinned. "Just being polite and waiting for you to stop."
"Well, did you miss me or not?" She demanded, still standing closer than I really felt comfortable about.
"I guess." I shrugged my shoulders, then put my hands on her waist to press her back slightly. "You talk so much! I'm used to Uncle Silas. He hardly talked all summer."
She twisted her head off to one side and looked at me strangely as she backed up a step.
"You're talking like him." She accused.
"Well, that's natural. I spent all summer with him." I shrugged. "Did you really want to go for a ride?"
"Of course I want to go for a ride." She snapped, still looking at me strangely.
"Guess we should tell everyone . . . "
"They know because I told them I was going to shanghai you away from them." She snapped as she got into the car. "You've changed."
"Really?"
"Yes, you have and it's not just the way you talk. It's almost as if you got a lot older or something."
"Only a couple of months." I shrugged as I started the car and drove out of the yard.
I paused at the end of Joe's driveway and gestured. "Which way?"
"Who cares? I just want to talk." She snapped again. "Tell me, what was it like being away from home and everything."
"Lonely at first." I admitted. "And a lot of work, but I got used to it. Then it was almost fun to see how much I could do in one day."
"So all you did was work?"
"Mostly." I grinned. "Uncle Silas isn't the greatest conversationalist so I'd go to bed early. I slept well though 'cause I was tired."
"Wow, a six-syllable word, you can still talk if you want to." She said in a slightly mocking tone.
"Give me a break would you." I chuckled. "Why don't you talk and I'll listen? Maybe I'll ask questions."
So she started to tell me about her summer. She talked about her friends, then she started talking about school and about what it was going to be like this year. Somehow it all felt strange to me and almost artificial. I'm not sure what she thought of me that day, but I was certainly in a strange mood when I drove her back to her house about two hours later. She gave me a quick hug, then ran inside. Joe stuck his head out the door and hollered that he'd already given Mom and Dad a ride home, so that's where I went too.
Neither Mom nor Dad said much to me that night as if they realised I was feeling a bit strange. In actual fact it was almost a week before I felt comfortable in my own home. By then I was going back to school and having a bit of a hard time fitting into the school thing as well. It did happen, but it took a while. School just didn't seem the same and a lot of the kids I knew seemed so immature.
The one thing that kept the first part of my last year of high school from being a total flop for me was that old car. Once I got it all cleaned up and gave it a good wax job it looked brand-new. At one point I heard that someone was passing around the rumour that I'd been restoring it for years and had spent thousands of dollars on it. I just laughed and told them I'd found it in an old barn.
Of course I had been right about dates. I think I could have asked out any girl in the school, but in actual fact my first date that year came when a girl asked me out, in a way that is.
The morning it happened, I'd picked Lisa-Marie up and we'd driven in to school as usual, but when we came in the door of the school, there was a huge crowd of students around the bulletin board.
"What's up?" Lisa Marie asked Sherry, a perky redhead classmate of hers.
"Special school dance, with a band." Sherry trilled. "Are you going Tom?"
"I guess," I shrugged.
"Need a date?" She asked, almost in a whisper.
"Umm, I guess?" I answered uncertainly.
"Great!" She squealed and suddenly hugged me, then danced off down the hall.
I just stood there with my jaw around my knees then I turned to look at Lisa-Marie's frowning face.
"Why her?" She demanded. "Of all the darn people in the world, why her? And why did you do it in front of every darn kid in the whole darn school."
"But . . . " I tried to protest.
"Oh, shut up!" She snarled and stomped away.
She didn't ride home with me that night and she wouldn't even talk to me when I went over to her house after supper that night. In fact she rode the school bus for the next week until. She didn't go to the dance either and my date that night didn't go well at all.
I should have known there were going to be problems. Sherry, the little redhead, spent the whole week before the dance telling everyone in the whole school that I was taking her. It got so it became a joke amongst my friends and I took a lot of ribbing about it, but even that wasn't as bad as the night of the dance itself.
As soon as I picked her up, I began to wonder about her because the first thing she did was reach over to my radio to change the station, then she cranked the volume as high as it would go. After that she sat silent and dreamy-eyed as we drove to the dance, literally ignoring anything I said to her. If that wasn't exactly what I'd expected, the evening deteriorated even further for me once we got to the dance.
It soon became apparent to me that Sherry regarded me as a trophy of some sort. I did my best to be a gentleman while she seemed to only want to lead me from one group of her acquaintances to another. When we were talking to them, all she seemed to want to do was tell them about riding in my wonderful old car. After about the fourth or fifth group of people, I'd had enough. I pulled her away from anyone I knew and looked her in the eye.
"Look, is this your idea of a good time at a dance?" I demanded. "We haven't even been on the dance floor."
"Well, yeah. I don't want to get all sweaty and stuff so early." She tossed her long hair back over her shoulder in a gesture that I could tell she'd practised for hours.
"But we haven't even talked to each other." I protested. "I thought we'd at least get a chance to get to know each other a little bit. If you don't want to dance, can't we at least sit down so we can listen to the music and talk."
"Why? We can talk any time, now that we're dating." She looked at me as if I had sprouted another set of eyes or a spare nose.
"Whoa, right there." I snapped. "You tricked me into this date and the way it's going, there won't be another one."
"But . . . Well, you aren't going out with anyone else or anything, and I know you think I'm sorta cute and . . . "
I could see tears forming in her eyes and I found that didn't care. She hadn't had one thought about anyone but herself all evening and now I was seeing her in a different light than I had before. Yet I wasn't about to let the night be a total waste without trying to do something to rescue it.
"Look, I came here with you to dance and to have fun, not to run around to everyone you know and brag about my car." I said firmly. "Either you and I can dance . . . or you can go talk to all your friends, while I find someone else who is willing to dance and have fun."
So we danced for a while, but we didn't have fun. I wasn't surprised that she soon developed a headache and wanted to go home. I didn't get a goodnight kiss or even a hug when I walked her to her door, yet I was surprised to find that once she had gone inside, all I felt was relief.
Like all school dances, the one that night had started early and as I drove home, I realised that it wasn't even ten o'clock when I drove past my brother Joe's house. There were lights on in the house and for some reason even the yard light was on. Thinking that there might be something wrong, I pulled into the yard. I'd gotten out of the car, but I hadn't even gotten to the front steps when Lisa-Marie came boiling out in a fury.
"What are you doing here?" She screamed at me. "Isn't it enough that you go to the dance with that . . . that stupid airhead, but now you have to . . . "
"So, I never said I was brilliant. If you want to kick my ass, then do it now." I said loudly as I turned away from her and bent over, pointing my butt her direction.
Lisa-Marie went from screaming anger, to laughter, and then to tears in seconds.
"Turn around and stand up, so you can kiss me, you darn fool." She whimpered, just as I saw her mom wave from the doorway and the yard light went out.
An hour later I was stroking Lisa-Marie's bare thigh as I lay sleepily staring at her face in the moonlight. We were on top of a hill, miles from the farm, and laying on an old blanket that I'd had in the back of the car. She sighed and snuggled, rolling against me and pulling the unused part of the blanket over us to keep us warm. Everywhere our bodies touched felt wonderful and I couldn't believe what we'd done, but I wouldn't have changed anything for the world. I gently wrapped her sweet body in my arms and pulled her tightly to me, then I sighed softly in satisfaction. I just wanted to hold her close and relax.
"Mom was sure right about me." She whispered.
"Hmm?" I managed a noncommital question.
"Well, about a week after you went to help Uncle Silas, she realised that I was mooning over the fact you weren't around. After talking to me about it, she warned me that if you ever touched me the right way, I'd end up with a bare butt and flat on my back with my legs spread."
That woke me up!
"What? Just what did you say?"
"You heard me." She giggled. "It's okay. She wasn't really upset or anything. Actually after that, she found out that I'd never done anything with anyone. Still, that same day she took me into town to see the doctor and got me started on the pill. There's no way we made a baby, not like her and Joe."
"Not like her and Joe?" Now I was completely confused.
"Yes silly, you're gonna be an uncle for real. She blames me for it though, saying that she was so weirded out by my strange behaviour that she forgot to take her pills for a few days and that's when she got caught."
"She's blaming you?"
"Oh, not really blaming me, but since it wasn't planned, she just has to blame someone. Of course Joe is happy as all get out, he's been wanting her to have a kid for years."
"But . . . she doesn't like the idea, or what?"
"Oh, I think she's perfectly okay with it. It's just that when she was pregnant with me, she had morning sickness for about four months and she says that was no fun at all." She kissed my shoulder and snuggled. "Anyway, enough about her. Let's talk about us."
"What about us?"
"Well, how are we going to go about going out together? Everyone thinks I'm your sister or your cousin so they're going to get all weird about it."
"Umm, who cares? We know you aren't."
"Yeah, but . . ."
"Oh come on, don't be silly. What do you want to do, make some announcement that we're going out or something? No one other than our family even has to know anything."
"That's no fun." She slapped my chest lightly. "I'm possessive, so I want you all to myself. I don't want any more airheads like Sherry coming around and trying to seduce you away from me."
"Hey, I might be dumb about dating, but I'm not dumb enough to fall for that trick twice." I laughed, finally deciding that she wasn't going to let me sleep like I wanted.
So we talked, but even snuggled in the blanket it wasn't long before we started to get chilly and decided that we should get home. Leaving her and going home to sleep by myself was hard. I mean, I'd slept with her now and I wanted her sleeping at my side, but I knew that wasn't possible. So after a long kiss and hug on her doorstep, I drove home alone.
As I lay in bed, I wondered how I was going to go about telling Mom and Dad that I wanted to be with their oldest son's stepdaughter.
The one thing about living on a farm is that after a few years, you seldom need an alarm clock. Over the years, you develop the habit of waking at the same time every morning, so at five-thirty the next morning, I woke up to the smell of coffee and the sound of Dad in the bathroom. I was laying there stretching when he tapped on the door, then stuck his head inside.
"Up and at 'em, Tom." He said quietly.
"Okay, Dad." I answered just as quietly, slowly rolling over to sit up.
It was a few minutes later as I was heading down the stairs to the kitchen that I suddenly realised that I had to talk to Mom and Dad about Lisa-Marie. Right away I knew that the best thing to do was to say something as soon as possible. Surprisingly, I didn't even feel apprehensive.
When I walked into the kitchen, Mom was at the stove finishing off our breakfast and Dad was listening to the weather forecast on the radio, everything was the same as every morning for as long as I could remember. I gave Mom a quick hug as I poured a cup of coffee for myself, then sat down and ate for a moment, listening with both of them to the weatherman warning us that there was a low pressure area coming in by tomorrow.
"Huh." Dad grunted, lowering the volume of the radio and looking up at me. "I guess you'll need to get done hauling those last straw bales into storage from the south field, but other than that and the chores, you can get some rest if you need it after your night of dancing."
"Okay." I nodded.
"How was the dance, by the way?" Mom asked.
"The dance wasn't so good." I snorted, recognising a chance to bring up the subject of Lisa-Marie when I saw it. "I took the wrong girl, so we left early and I took her home. It turns out that all Sherry wanted to do was brag to people that she was now my girl and I had a bit of an argument with her about making assumptions."
"Ohh?" Mom frowned. "You didn't get in all that early."
"No, I stopped to apologise to the right girl and she forgave me, so we spent a while together."
"And just who is this right girl?" Dad asked quietly.
I took a deep breath and tried my best to smile as I looked right at him.
"Lisa-Marie" I answered as proudly and steadily as I could.
"Well, finally!" Mom said emphatically while Dad just smiled and nodded his head.
I was left staring at them, both of them simply looked smug and satisfied.
"You knew?" I managed to say as my face must have twisted in surprise.
"Perhaps not knew, so much as hoped." Mom smiled. "You two do suit each other perfectly."
"But . . ."
"Don't fight it, son. If Lisa-Marie has made up her mind and you've agreed with her, we certainly aren't going to fight it. She's a wonderful young woman and you're a fine young man. I'm pleased about it." Dad nodded. "I don't suppose you've made any great changes in what you plan on doing with your lives have you?"
"Gee Dad, we just got together last night." I stammered. "We haven't had time to really decide anything like that."
"Hmmph, getting together may be the biggest decision you'll ever make, right there." He said slowly. "Everything else you do in life is going to be done as partners and picking the right partner to do it with is sometimes easy, and sometimes hard. I think you've both made a good choice."