Stay Away From My Sisters!!!!

Working with Ralph made for some fun and crazy days. We came to know each other quite well; like any people who work very closely over a period of time. That created opportunities for tension at times and opportunities for harassing each other at other times. Over time you just develop an ability to tweak one another.

Ralph was particularly easy to tweak when it came to his sisters. Ralph has two sisters - Pam and Paula - and he was rather protective when it came to them. I had never met either of them, but that didn't stop me from tweaking Ralph a bit by telling him I was going to ask one of them out but I couldn't decide which one.

Telling Ralph that I was going to ask out one of his sisters was the equivalent of waving a red cloth in front of an angry bull. Ralph responded immediately and vehemently, "Stay away from my sisters!!! I won't allow my sisters to ever date a video guy because I know what video guys are like." Ralph insisted that I needed to find a woman who was a geeky, broadcast engineer so the two of us could sit around in the evening and discuss "important" things like whether NTSC or PAL was a better color system.

Now I had no real interest in dating either one of them, but I had a great deal of interest in pulling Ralph's chain, so I asked about them regularly. I commented on them whenever the opportunity presented itself. All in all, I looked for opportunities to bring them up in conversation as often as possible.

Anytime there was a discussion about family - I mentioned Pam and Paula.

Whenever there was a discussion about my (nonexistent) dating life - I mentioned Pam and Paula.

Sometimes I brought them up with no prior prompting at all just to keep the fear in the back of his mind that I might actually call one of them.

Just the faintest suggestion that Ralph and I could be brothers-in-law caused the hair on the back of his neck to stick out and his ears to turn red. "Stay away from my sisters!!!!," he would demand.

Like any good friend; the more he got worked up about it, the more I mentioned it.

I suppose Ralph finally figured out that I had no interest in asking out either of his sisters. I don't think he really believed it, though, until I announced that Diane and I were engaged; perhaps not even until he witnessed the wedding!