Getting From Me to Jack Bauer in Two Moves

I moved into the house my parents currently live in when I was twelve or so. Next door to us were Jim and Nadine. They were pretty nice. Jim liked to surf and windsurf and owned a huge, old yellow truck to take his boards everywhere, while Nadine was more the prototypical suburban wife. But really, there are two things I remember about them: the first is that they had a Jack Russel named Bandit, who wandered around the neighborhood with a jaunty bandanna around his neck and barked at everything that moved. I thought he was the coolest dog ever, but I think everyone else in the neighborhood was glad when Jim and Nadine moved a few years later.

The other thing I remember is that when Nadine's family visited, her sister looked really familiar. Eventually my mom told me that she was an actress, and I probably knew her as the mom in Free Willy. Being twelve, I thought this was awesome. Even though I thought that movie was lame, its still cool to be near someone who is in a movie that I saw when I was nine. Whenever she was visiting, I would point out to my friends "That's the person who played the mom in Free Willy!" I would get some appreciative grunts, but that's about it.

And then I didn't think about that for quite a while. This all came back when I got an email from my mom this morning. She reads the blog, and constantly sends me emails with her responses. Today's email mentioned how she started watching 24 this season, and that the person who plays Karen Hughes is Jayne Atkinson, who is also our old neighbor's sister. It may be my mucus congested brain that makes me think this is cool, but that fact that playing the 'Kevin Bacon' game, you can get from me to Kiefer Sutherland in only two moves strikes me as awesome.