I am the holder of something secret, very secret. Something so very secret that even the elite and highly trained police force of Saranac Lake cannot access. It is so secret that sometimes even I can’t remember what it is. The NYPD, FBI and Interpol do not have the ability to know my secret. Hackers from Lithuania and Bulgaria have attempted to get their hands on this secret…to no success,

But the time for this secret to be made public is approaching. October 8, 2021 to be precise. But all awesome happenings involve a time of waiting.

–To view Halley’s Comet, a stargazer must wait seventy-six years. I saw it in 1987. Next appearance will be July 28, 2061.

–The Shroud of Turin is publicly displayed every ten years or so.

–The paintings on the wall of the Lascaux, France caves waited about 17,000 years before the eyes of modern humans saw them. (Some things are worth waiting for, I guess.)

But our modern technology allows many things to be viewed at a moments notice. With the push of a button we can see reruns of Laverne & Shirley or I Love Lucy. One can even find ancient recordings of Bob Dylan actually singing before he “went electric.”

But I digress.

You may be asking yourself: “What is this secret that he’s talking about? That’s a fair question. The answer lies two feet from where I am typing. It’s in a manila folder. It’s something I have written. I’ve spent almost three months working on this project. No eyes but mine have seen it and it will stay semi-hidden until October 8.

I’m talking about the toast that I am to give at the rehearsal dinner. The dinner is the evening before my son gets married.

I’ve spent many brain-hours trying to make it a really good speech. After all, I will give the speech only once in my life, my son will hear it only once…and then it becomes an archive in my private files. I call them the X-Files. I tried to make it special but my son, Brian told me I only had about five minutes.

Seems a pity. All this effort for five minutes? All the important things to say to my son and the assemblage of wedding attendees.

So much to say…so little time.