Last weekend, we lost one of the magnetic “Matt Denn for Lieutenant Governor” signs from the side of Mrs. Denn’s Pacifica as we were zipping away from the end of Delaware City’s Delaware Days parade.  Kathy Beck saw it lying on Route 9 and picked it up for me.  After thanking her a thousand times, I asked her where I could come get it from her.  She said she would be helping with the monthly pancake breakfast at the Hockessin Fire Hall, and I could get it from her there.

I make breakfast for the boys a lot—waffles, pancakes, nothing complicated, but it had been an accepted fact of life for the first three years of their lives that daddy makes the best pancakes, daddy makes the best waffles, etc.  Any time we ate breakfast out, I would ask Adam if the pancakes or waffles he was eating were as good as daddy’s.  My waffles lost out recently to some giant Belgian waffles that State Senate candidate Harold Stafford’s friend made at a breakfast fundraiser several months ago.  But those waffles had a Roger Maris style asterisk next to the award, because I don’t have a Belgian waffle-maker.   Last Sunday, however, my pancakes bit the dust fair and square: Adam announced that Kathy’s buttermilk pancakes from the Hockessin Fire Hall breakfast were “a tie” with mine, and when I asked about the sweet potato pancakes, he simply declined to respond.  The good news for the Hockessin Fire Hall is that we will be back, Adam is already asking when the next pancake breakfast is.  The bad news is that I am no longer the undisputed pancake champion.  Soon the boys will be asking for the car keys and telling me they will be home “whenever.”