Bob and Carol Burchell pulled into their driveway during the snowstorm, and were surprised to see their daughter, Katie, along with her boyfriend, Randy Jones, sitting on the porch swing, wrapped in a blanket. Both were shivering and smiling.

They followed her parents inside, and in minutes had some hot soup inside them. Randy and Katie watched a couple of television programs together, and then Randy said goodnight and walked home.

“Randy seems to be a really nice boy, Honey,” Carol said.

“Thanks, Mom. I like him a lot.”

Bob sat quietly, sucking on a cup of evening coffee as though it were dessert. He had a puzzled look on his face.

“Everything OK, Dad?” Katie said.

“Oh … sure.” He took another sip. “It’s just … well, I think maybe one of you doesn’t show a lot of good sense.”

Katie looked surprised.

Bob explained. “You see, it’s one of those what’s-wrong-with-this-picture things. Here you have a perfectly warm house, you have a key to the house, and here are two seemingly intelligent young people wrapped in a blanket to keep from freezing to death, sitting out on a frozen steel porch swing. Is that a smart thing to do?”

“No it isn’t,” Katie said. “That’s what I told him. I said we could go in and get something to eat where we’d be comfortable. All he’d let me do is get that blanket.”

“That was his idea, freezing on the porch?”

“Yes,” Katie said, smiling. “Randy said if we went in the house before you two got home, it might hurt my reputation, and he wasn’t willing to risk that.”

Katie went into the other room. Bob looked at Carol and smiled.

“You know,” he said. “I think I kinda like that boy.”

Brought to you by the old timers who hang out at the Fairview Inn in Talkeetna, Alaska. Dance and romance center of the North.