My mom, Ann Votel Fashingbauer, was in her late 60s when she attended St. Thomas with me in the 1980s under their parents-go-free deal. She shared class with many of my friends. One of them, Dave Witkowski, worked as a cashier at Lunds in Highland Park.

One Friday night, a group of friends and I went thru Dave's checkout line, and then later, completely separately, my mom came through. Dave, a history classmate of my mom's, got so excited, telling her, "The rest of the gang was just in here!"

Mom passed away this March at 91, but in the years since college, she must have repeated that to me 100 times. She was so pleased that as a sixty-something, she was still hip enough to be called part of "the gang."