My dad was an electrical engineer and always seemed to hold jobs that involved a lot of travel. Sometimes he would only be home on weekends. Sometimes not even then for weeks at a time. When he was home, he was usually too tired to do anything strenuous. But he and I had some things we did together; and, most times, even after I turned sixteen with dates and my own car and all that went with it, I would always try to be at home for at least one of the weekend nights if dad was around. We would have a rare family supper together and then dad and I would get involved with playing backgammon or chess. I had a chance in backgammon, but was a pretty poor chess player compared to dad. The few times I won I'm pretty sure he let me. At least, he could never convince me he hadn't. Regardless, we always had fun playing. The activity, if you can call it that, I most enjoyed in those weekends, though, was when dad and I would go out for breakfast. Mom was not an early riser, and so the two of us often would get ready and make a run to the Waffle House (his favorite), knowing that when we got back mom would be ready to string us both up for not waiting for her to get out of bed. Had we done so, breakfast would have been a thing of the past. And, we would have missed out on a wonderful ritual we had. That was our time, those breakfasts. That was when we really conversed and shared the things in our hearts and those that went on in our lives. Catching up. That's what went on at our breakfasts. We caught up with one another in a personal and meaningful way. And, I guess we got pretty caught up in each other, as well, over my waffles and his bacon and eggs; because, one morning when we were there we began to notice the waitress throwing us some really off kinds of glances and at one point just plain glaring at us. Having no idea what her trouble was, we went on with our "catching up" while doing our best to ignore her. She, however, was not up to ignoring us. When she brought the check she was fairly fuming and growled at my dad, "I know who you are. You're that awful school principal that's been all over the news for dating the students." Dad and I just looked at each other, with our equally widened identical blue eyes and laughed, which just made the woman more angry. She wouldn't believe dad when he told her I was his daughter, and instead was still grumbling about us "not fooling" her when we went out the door. So loudly, too, that we considered finding another place for our breakfasts. We never did, though. We went back to our Waffle House many times over and never saw that waitress again. That is a story we retold with one another for...oh, gosh, I guess for as long as dad lived; and, somehow, thereafter it only made our breakfasts even more of a treasure. Not in my wildest dreams would I ever want to be that young again, but I do think of those breakfasts with fondness and wouldn't mind the chance to relive one with my dad.