I Blocked John Stossel's Limo
Last night we drove up to Columbus to a very elegant event celebrating the Buckeye Institute's 10th anniversary. John Stossel spoke (not Jim Tressel, a football coach, which was what DOB thought I had said).

DOB gave me the task of picking where to sit, which is always a delicate task in a crowd. The temptation is to either find a place with someone you know and sit by them (in which case you never meet anybody new) or to pick a place at an empty table and see who comes (but if the room is already mostly full, chances are good you'll be stuck by yourselves). I picked a half-way full table as near the middle of the room as we could get without getting into the tables reserved for groups.

It turned out that the gentleman whom DOB sat next to was someone whom he had worked on an opposing campaign from nearly a decade ago. And who lives just a short distance from where he works now. Soon they were swapping political critiques and tales like old cronies.

Stossel's speech was good (thoughts thereby inspired in a later post), and dinner was good, but we did not win the giveaway of a chartered flight for eight to Atlantic City. Oh well.

DOB was trying walking with a cane for the first time since the latest injury. We were pleased with it overall--it looked more distinguished than crutches and nobody blamed me for beating up on him. However, it made walking slower and more painstaking than with crutches, and we accidentally parked on a relatively distant side of the hotel. Plus, the hotel driveway was paved in bricks, which looked elegant but were awkward to walk on.

So when we made it to the front door, I volunteered to get the car while he finished up a conversation. As I brought the car around, I realized that John Stossel and the Buckeye dignitaries were loading into a limo on the left side of the drive. I pulled up as far to the right as I could and got out so DOB could drive, leaving the car running and, in an instinctive effort to avoid locking the keys in the car, the driver's door open.

DOB was still talking and I watched and realized, too late, that the car door was blocking the middle space in the drive, which the limo would have to get through to get around another limo in front of it. One of the valets came along and held the door almost closed so that the limo could squeeze through.

John Stossel was whisked back to ABC to continue his noble work, and I did not lock the keys in a running car. All was well.