Today, while helping my mother-in-law with a word processor problem, she just casually drops some anecdote about her childhood friend's older sister Judy. "You know, the woman who wrote Ordinary People?"
Oh, just ol' Judy? Just the author of one of the best novels I read in high school that was adapted to cinema four years after publication for a Best Picture Oscar? I’ve heard most of my mother-in-law's stories dozens of times, but this was the first time I found out she spent part of her childhood playing with Judith Guest's younger sister...that she attended the author's wedding as a kid.
Her stories from Ripon College about young "Harry Ford" are practically on a loop, but this was a new one.