Back in the day, my little sister and I must have been inseparable. A good sidekick, she was. Nowadays I don't see nearly enough of her, though she lives only 20 minutes away.

She's still just as cute though.

Isn't that picture on the left quintessential of the times? The old cabinet TV, the TV trays, and the portrait of an aunt, the nurse, at her graduation? Doesn't every family, every pair of sisters, have an old photo exactly like this one?

If I'm not mistaken, the photo on the right shows the stairs I hurried down on the night Mom got me out of bed to see the Beatles' first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. Sadly, they weren't singing beetle bugs as I'd expected.

Life is full of stinging disappointments.