It's a good thing our oldest son could outrun his sister when they were kids. Especially after one of our "earthquake drills." Oh, the earth wasn't really shaking. It was another one of those inventions of a wacky daddy.

It started after we returned from a trip to California where we heard a lot about earthquakes. So - for no intelligent reason I can think of - I would occasionally yell randomly, "Earthquake drill!" And the ensuing script went something like this. Brother would run to his sister and hold her tightly. Father: "What are you doing, son?" Brother: "You said if there was an earthquake, we should hang onto something heavy!" This is when speed saved his young life.

Actually, that's pretty good advice when things are moving that never moved before. Hang onto something heavy.

Nine years old and oh, so proud. Proud of the gift I had just bought for my mom for Mother's Day, that is. I picked it out myself. I paid for it with my own allowance. And I ruined it all by myself.

It was a two-carnation corsage. With a plastic bumblebee. That bumblebee was really cool. I was pushing the speed limit on my bicycle with the white florist box perched on my handlebars. Until I hit a bump and it went flying. I ran over my Mother's Day present. The flowers were crushed. So was I.

Ah, the lost art of tying a tie. I experienced it this past weekend as the man doing the marrying at a young couple's wedding.

It was fairly amusing watching the helpless look on the groomsmen's faces as they were handed their necktie to put on for the ceremony. There they stood, fingering that mysterious piece of cloth, wondering what to do with it. I suggested to the guys my theory as to how ties came to be - they were invented by a woman who had a big time grudge against men. Gloating over the thought that every time men would have to dress up, they'd strangle themselves.

They're the guys who wear dark glasses, talk to their wrist, and wear that trademark stone face. They're the almost legendary Secret Service agents who guard the life of the President of the United States.

But even the President himself was joking about them the other night at the White House Correspondents' Dinner. He said, "I had more to say, but I have to get the Secret Service back before their new curfew."

Wives love to get their husbands to weddings. Hopefully, the love-feast will jumpstart a little romance in the old boy's soul. I saw a lot of hand-holding and sitting close last weekend when Jimmy and Tanya got married. It works, girls!

I had a ringside seat on it all. Actually, a ringside stand. I was doing the honors, marrying a young couple I think the world of. My "Kodak moment" was watching that googly-eyed groom as he watched his beautiful bride coming down the aisle.

Our grandson's gaining weight, and is he ever going to be glad! (Unlike his grandfather who finds weight gain depressing). Yes, soon he will be 20 pounds. And that means his parents will turn his car seat around. No more looking out the rear window.

And that's a great feeling. You don't have to keep looking back at where you've already been. It's all about looking at where you're going now.

That's a change that's good news for even us grown up kids. Turning your "seat" around. Moving past the depressing view you get when you keep looking back at where you've been. Especially when what you see is the hits, the hurts and the hard times in your past. Every time I look through that window, clouds roll in and cover the sun. If I look back a lot, I'll end up looking down even more.

If you're a mayor, you're used to taking the heat. But not the flames.

But last weekend, that's exactly what Newark, N.J. Mayor Cory Booker did. To save his next door neighbor.

Booker arrived home at his apartment to find one of his security detail knocking on the door of the building next door to warn them that the second floor was on fire. The officer managed to get two women and a man out of the building. But one of the women told the mayor and his security men that her daughter Zina was still upstairs.

Can't find the trophy though. I think the last time I saw it, it was broken. That's the problem with trophies. Just ask the University of Alabama football team. They won it all this year - including the national champion trophy. It's a $30,000 Waterford crystal football. Well, it was.

We know about the iceberg. And the lifeboats. Even the wreckage and debris two miles under the ocean.

But with a blockbuster movie and all the Titanic TV specials, we probably won't be hearing about the lists. Not the first, second and third class passenger lists from when the voyage began. But the two lists that emerged when the Titanic went down. As it turns out, the only lists that mattered.

There's just something about the Titanic. Yes, the ship sank - but it seems our fascination with it is unsinkable. And that includes me.

So many stories. So many life lessons. But in the many moving stories of that horrible, haunting night, there's one that just blows me away. One passenger - John Harper. A man whose life and choices during those three fateful hours still give me goosebumps.

John Harper was a Scottish pastor...a widower with a six-year-old daughter...a man who'd been invited to preach at Chicago's prestigious Moody Memorial Church. It was April 1912. And it just so happened that a ship - the new world wonder, named Titanic, was sailing for America. John Harper booked passage for himself, along with his daughter Nina and her aunt.