1. My favorite story is when I traveled with my father and sister to a family in Georgia. We all piled into this car, then we gassed it up, we got on the road and… maybe twenty, twenty-five minutes into it, a flat tire. Unfortunately, this was before everybody had a cell phone, so we for the police to come get us. The police laughed a little because it was hot and my father was left with two children. We learned how to change a tire that day. Tire′s changed, we′re back on the road. About five hours later, my father got a ticket because he was trying to save time, met some more policemen—very exciting—got back on the road, and made it in time for a beautiful family reunion, and had a wonderful time driving back with my dad.
I think one of my favorite stories is a story. We were living in this big old house—my parents, and my two older brothers, and myself—and we were having a family get-together. I′m not quite sure if it was Christmas Eve or if it was Christmas day, but all of a , we were all in the living room having a grand old time, and we heard, "Ho, ho, ho," on the stairs. And I remember as a little kid getting so nervous and… but nervous, and not knowing what to do and, "Could it be Santa?" and whatnot. And, you know, my parents told us to go to the stairs, and we went to the staircase, looked up, and there was Santa Claus down the stairs with a bag of toys and whatnot. Uh… The funny thing was I guess my father didn′t really look into the best friend that he could have asked to play Santa Claus because he asked one of his friends that didn′t speak English. So our Santa Claus only spoke Portuguese, and the whole time he was much complaining that we were too heavy sitting on his lap, and he was swearing in Portuguese, and complaining that it was hot in the suit, and how he wanted to eat, and … but as kids, we didn′t realize any of that. We didn′t even realize that Santa couldn′t speak to us. We were just so excited that he was there and us presents.