Another Saturday Night

As promised, a summary of the Denn family’s busy Saturday up and down the State of Delaware.

Zach, Adam and I started the day at the A Philip Randolph Institute meeting at the Longshoreman’s Hall in Wilmington. Zach and Adam have been to more than their share of APRI meetings with me, and they come prepared: we had a bag full of books and two glasses of milk, which kept them happy and occupied for the duration of our stay. My friend Peaches Whalen, the head of APRI in Delaware, let me get up and give my report early, and while I did John Flaherty, noted public interest lobbyist, kept an eye on the boys for me. John later said that they were better behaved than 90% of the members of the Delaware General Assembly.

After another stop in Wilmington, we headed home to pick up Mrs. Denn (who spent part of the morning at the salon, to ensure that she continues to look fabulous) (which she does) (hi, honey), and headed south. I had prepared a special set of CD’s for the boys to listen to in the car, containing a combination of Wiggles, Sesame Street, and Signing Time songs. I refer to it as the “Hara-Kiri Mix Tape.” Unfortunately, because Adam is consumed by the Wiggles, all it did was cause wild emotional swings in the back seat as the Wiggles brought Adam to the pinnacle of ecstacy, and then Grover and Ernie would send him crashing back to earth.

We made a brief stop at the AFRAM festival in Seaford, and then headed east (stopping only to look at some cows and pigs) to the Stonewall Democrats annual fundraiser at Jim D’Orta’s beautiful house in Rehoboth. As always, the Stonewall Dems put on a great event. The boys did everything they could to disrupt it. While speeches were being given, Adam picked up a stick off the ground, announced that he was a conductor, and proceeded to sing various nursery rhymes and use his conductor’s baton to command others to sing along. And that was actually less obtrusive than Zach, who ran through the entire crowd searching for Jim’s dog and yelling “doggie!”, then strode onto the stage where Lt. Governor Carney was speaking, and began spinning in circles behind him and exposing his belly button.

As the party was winding down, I was talking to Pete Keenan, the tough-as-nails, hard-working chairman of the 38th Representative District. Adam came up and handed him a balled-up Winnie the Pooh placemat, and said “can you hold Pooh?” Pete said “sure.” As we were both getting ready to leave (the Denns en route to the boardwalk), Pete said “is there somewhere to throw this”? I said, “it’s just a placemat, you can throw it in the garbage.” He said “no, there’s poo in it.” And it then occurred to me that Pete had been calmly standing there talking to me for at least a couple of minutes believing that he was holding a handful of human waste wrapped up in a plastic placemat. In the dictionary next to the word “unflappable,” you will find a picture of Pete Keenan.