One day in Germany my father told us a story. A class from a private girl's school use to come to his Long Island deli every once in a while. One of the girls in the class took a liking to my then teen-aged uncle, who worked in the deli. They went out on several dates. She would send a limo to the deli to pick him up.
Once, on a visit to the deli just before Thanksgiving, the girls were excitedly talking about their holiday plans. All except the girl who dated my uncle. She went into the back of the deli and started crying. In all likelihood I would have been there, playing or napping amongst the stacked cases of beer and soda. Her parents, she explained, were spending the holiday in Europe, and she was spending the holiday alone. Taking pity on her my parents invited her to our house. She declined and at some point she and my uncle stopped seeing each other.
A couple of years ago my Dad realized what happened to that girl. She grew up to be Paris Hilton's mother.
That's quite a story, right? Had Paris Hilton's future mother and my uncle hit it off there would be no Paris, no Nikki, no Barron, and no Conrad Junior. No Simple Life, no grainy hotel room movies. Popular culture of the early-21st century would have been completely different.
Except for one minor detail.
I looked it up and Kathy Richards Hilton would have been five or six years old when this happened. Ah, well, it's a great story so I'll probably keep telling it.
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