Just one of those funny moments in life

The story I am about to tell, may not be funny to most of you. Its one of those "you had to be there" type of stories. This moment in time with Michelle, Marc, and Darryl Strawberry falls into my top 3 'laughing moments' of all time.

We had a family vacation at Virginia Beach the summer of 2000. Like most family vacations, you hang out by the ocean, swim, fish, sleep, playing games, drink, sun bathe, did I say drink? Anyway, this particular day, we were drinking pretty much the entire day. The entire family retired early, except for the three of us. We continued drinking on the deck, listening to the ocean and some music. This was a real bonding time for the three of us. Michelle and Marc were really getting to know each other, we were laughing and having a great time into the wee hours of the morning.

At one point, Marc says he has to go to the bathroom. Instead of going through the house and waking everyone up, he was just going to run under the deck and "go". Marc was taking a little longer than he should. Michelle and I start to worry. I decided to go down stairs to see what was going on. The second I stood up, a WOLF came up the stairs. Michelle and I freak out -- I mean freak out! Were were dead in our tracks. What the heck is a WOLF doing at the beach? For a split second, I thought this WOLF ate Marc Renkes and that is why he did not come back. That obviously was not the case, because Marc walks up the stairs behind the WOLF and says "Hey, look what I found". OK, it was not a wolf, just a dog that looked like one. But it was dark, we were drunk, you would have thought the same thing.

That was the "you had to be there" part of the story.

The emotions were running high. It went from "We are all having a great time" to "Where in the world is Marc Renkes" to "Holy crap there is a WOLF 5 feet from us (and I don't have to go to the bathroom anymore)" to "Damn it--the WOLF ate Marc Renkes" to "Marc Renkes announcing to the world that he now has a new pet".

Here is the funny part:

We ended up doing a photo shoot with Darryl Strawberry. Yes, we named the dog Darryl Strawberry. I still have no clue why we named it that. It just seemed like a good name. We laughed so hard. You all know the type of laugh I am talking about. The kind where you start to cry, your mouth hurts, your stomach hurts, etc.

I just thought everyone would like to see these photos.

We love you Darryl Strawberry!