Surprise

Me and the UPS man and Fed EX man know each other well. Almost daily the doorbell rings and they leave a box or two on the front steps. The surprise is long gone. There is never anything too exciting in the boxes. The family ignores the door and I'm always left alone to tote them into the house. They are always dance related, usually shoes, or tights, or costumes, or poms...

Today the doorbell rang again and there was a small envelope addressed to me: Aunt Lori. It was from my cute, thoughtful niece Libby. She sent me two Donny Osmond CD's. She apparently works with one of Donny Osmond's nephew and she knows how much I love Donny Osmond. This has been going on since the 70's. He was IT when I was a teenager. He was 'Edward' for all the teenage girls. He was handsome, and wholesome, with a huge smile and sang wonderfully. He happened to live in Provo, UT then and so did I. His family owned 'The Riveria' apartments and my dad happened to be called as Branch President of one of the single wards at BYU and they were in the ward. They (Donny and Marie) didn't attend often because they were usually out of town, touring, singing, filming but occasionally they came and I would swoon. He had no idea who I was but that's okay, I was content to worship from afar.

When I turned 12 my parents gave my tickets to 'The Donny Osmond' concert in Vegas and we had back stage passes for after the show. I was pretty excited but had some severe tooth pain all week. I was too afraid to tell my parents about it for fear I might have to miss the concert so I just kept sneaking Tylenol. By the time we arrived in Vegas the pain was almost unbearable and my mouth began to swell. I barely remember the concert and the next morning we had to find a dentist that would let us in on an emergency root canal....My lip was huge, I couldn't shut my mouth and apparently I had a tooth abscess. It was not the happy memory it should have been.

I've attended many Donny Osmond concert's since then and loved everyone of them. Many years ago we traveled with Earls to Vancouver to see him play Joseph in the Technicolor Dreamcoat. WE got to watch him play Gaston on Broadway in Beauty in the Beast. Peggy had got us front row tickets and I was pretty excited. As the play began, we realized immediately that Gaston was not Donny. I was trying to enjoy it, but still very disappointed. At intermission I asked to see the manager. I explained nicely to her that we had come all the way from Washington to see Donny, (well and for our annual costume show) and even though there was probably nothing she could do we were very disappointed. She must have had a crush on Donny as well, because she offered us great tickets a couple of nights later to come see it again when Donny would be Gaston.

Thanks Libby! I'm definetly going to enjoy these CD's.