Welcome to You Really Had to Be There “cast-off.” This will be upgraded to “launch” upon validation by reader comment(s?). (We now are launched!)

As the “Father of Waters” deposits lakes and ponds in his excursions toward an unconstrained destiny, my memory banks brim with little tales wanting to overflow into accessible pools. Meanwhile, the calendar suggests drifting from my headwaters is carrying me downstream to the unbordered expanse, and the confluence of technology and a swift kick from the Muse Clio (history) and her mother Mnemosyne (memory) has me plugging the laptop in beside my bed at 5:40 a.m. Thus, the pirogue gently glides into the waters, and the words will soon distill into the clouds.

You Really Had to Be There — but you weren’t! — so my hope is you will find the basic tales heartwarming, amusing, maybe sometimes instructive — and your similar experiences will bubble to the surface, warm my heart, amuse, and maybe sometimes instruct me.

We’re not stirring up chicken soup here — not that heartwarming! (Or, we leave it to the beholder.) We’ll be highlighting poignant vignettes — the unusual, not the familiar or the heroic. Not the familiar tale of the special needs child carried around the bases, or the heroic tale of my grandson’s two-out, three-run homer to knock the three-time champions out of the playoffs. The unusual counts, even if heroic, as when my granddaughter, with her team down by 2 with 1.3 seconds on the clock and the opponents inbounding from underneath our basket, defended their long pass by chasing it the length of the court, shielding the opponent without touching the ball  (so that no time ticked off the clock when it went out of bounds), leading to our inbounding for a layup to tie, then win the tournament in overtime. Think “The Little Engine that Could.”