Last summer we saw our only daughter get married, and the experience was unforgettable. Tomorrow, it is our oldest son. Two weddings in less than a year.

But we're happy, because like our daughter, he has selected wisely - a flaming redhead with enough energy and wit to match his. Besides, he's 25, a year younger than I was. So how can I complain?But just as I did when our daughter married, I feel the urge to reminisce. Darrin has a brain with the most positive dimensions of each of his parents, plus some extras thrown in.

That means he's smarter than both of us, and that he can do anything he wants in life.

We could see it early. He was curious and highly verbal.

He mastered puzzles and movable toys instantly. He developed an accelerated vocabulary when only a few months old - with perfect pronunciation. He was such a quick study that he put a huge poster of Albert Einstein on his bedroom wall.

That is, when he finally got a bedroom.

You know how it is with the oldest - he or she must always be the pioneer - the one you experiment on to learn how to raise kids, and the one who is doomed to have the smallest number of amenities. When our house became too small for our number of children, he willingly moved to the basement where he drew sheets around his bed to create the illusion of a room.

He liked it. In fact, when we finally built some rooms in the basement, he was unimpressed. Maybe that has something to do with his refusal to bow to peer pressure, designer labels or flashy cars.

We raised a son who is more frugal than we are.

When he recently had his old Dodge Omni serviced and found it had several problems, he bought the items he needed separately and persuaded his mechanically astute roommate to install them for free.

"I figure it saved me $200," he said.

Although a whiz in computer science, he decided late in his college career that it was not nearly as interesting as journalism - even if he would never be rich.

So now on the eve of his marriage, he is a new college graduate with a double-major in journalism and computer science.

As a child he never did anything for the first time until he could do it immediately. He thought crawling was beneath him and waited instead until he could walk - perfectly with the first step. Then, when he went out to play with other kids, he walked across our huge lawn at U. of U. married student housing without once looking back.

He's never looked back since. He decides what he wants to do, then does it, never considering the possibility of failure. That was his style when he got on the plane to go to college, as well as later when he went to South Africa.

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It was the same when he began looking for permanent employment. He sent out a number of resumes, had some interviews, and accepted a job in California as a medical writer.

That will be different than the free-wheeling satire he is so gifted at writing, but he's not worried.

He's just as assured about the vibrant young woman he is about to marry. She is right for him. He knows it, so he's approaching his marriage with typical confidence and optimism. But he also has a crazy, "Saturday Night Live" personality that will keep him from taking himself too seriously.

Fortunately, so does she.

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