Heritage

For breakfast today, I'm having some Greek bread that Dad made. The recipe is from the island of Lesbos, which is a couple of miles off the coast of Turkey, which was the former Asia Minor (I think that's right.)

As I was snacking on some of this bread last night, Dad told this story:

Papou (his father) was born in Aisa Minor (now Turkey), to Greek parents. When he was young, about 4 or 5, his parents moved to Lesbos. They moved because his mother had a dream that the Turks were going to kill the Greeks who lived in Aisa Minor. That day, she got someone to take them in a boat to Lesbos. The next day, the Turks attacked the Greeks and just about all the Greeks in their village were killed. About 5 years later they emigrated to the US, where Papou's father had been all that time, earning money to bring the family over.

Mom told the story that she and her girlfriends, in high school, had gone to see a band called the Pretenders, and they met the band after the show. The band invited them to go out with them in their car, but they girls didn't go. They didn't know the boys, and thus couldn't go in their car. So now I know, that's where I get it. I don't like going in strangers' cars. They could attack you, you know?

So, just two stories that, if they had gone differently, would mean maybe I wouldn't be here today.