HAPPY BIRTHDAY JPO !!!
Step up on the temporal transporter pad of your Wells-Class Time Ship for a trip back to our college weekends, Junior and Senior year
(You HAVE upgraded your craft to a WELLS-CLASS ?)
If memory serves, more than a few Saturday nights found the four of us waiting with great anticipation for those oft-since heard words:
“LIVE from New York! Its SATURDAY NIGHT !!!”
The show is entering it’s 38th season. Is this not incredible?!
When SNL first aired in 1975 it almost instantly became a cult phenomenon amongst the college-age crowd. Our weekend duties, plans and studies seemed coordinated around the show’s start time at 11:29:30 p.m. Eastern.
The brilliant, and never duplicated original cast was alternately hilarious, politically cutting and sometimes so silly you had to laugh anyway.
“I want to feed your fingertips to the wolverines.”
The reason the show connects so vividly with JPO, our Birthday Boy, goes back to hours spent, (they were decidedly NOT misspent) in the basement of his Parent’s house.
We would gather in the Senior O’s TV rec room around 10pm Saturday evening with snacks and beverages.
Whoops, hollers and general commotion ensued until 1am, when we would roar 
Ah, youth! Try staying up that late today. And that steep driveway! Do you remember the ice storm of our wedding day and the effort it took to get the JPO-mobile up that slippery slope? What was that little vehicle, a PINTO perhaps?
Thinking back on what a nuisance we were, the Senior O’s must have been Saints. They were sweet, patient, gracious and would only very infrequently ask us to keep it down to a dull roar. The other three sets of parents would never have been so accommodating. These were wonderful people who gave us a safe place to gather. Their home was a haven of security and enjoyment.
It is no surprise they raised such a great son. Here is JPO, cowpoke. How cute is he? Look at all that hair.
Better not complain about this particular picture since I have found WAY worse ones involving beer bottles, green surgical scrubs, fire arms and acts of incivility too controversial to mention.
The little SNL video that follows, in a fit of whimsy, can be cast with Mc A.O. standing in for Lauren Hutton, who makes a brief appearance.
“What a swinging piece of stuff”!
The boys we were soon to marry were then (and occasionally still are) The Wild & Crazy Guys.
“It’s easy to score with us! We’re hard up!”
I shall take on the role of Zhelezna Postruk 
(Obviously this would be before my crest went all grey and I discovered well-fitting undergarments)
Our wild & crazy guys may have worn bad clothes, but they both grew up to be brilliant and well respected men in their chosen professions.
How these trustworthy, remarkable rocks of stability somehow sprang from the protesting-polyester-plaid seventies, I’ll never know.
They do dress better than they did, although JPO has been recently spotted wearing socks and flip-flops… at the same time.
JPO is an extraordinary husband, a great Dad and a loyal friend.
“ FOXES?!?! Let’s get it out!”
Happy Birthday JPO, or S****O, as you will always be to us.
Thank you so much for all the help and guidance on the home improvement front.
You are my exalted window and door replacement guru.
We love you.
