42

As my son just pointed out he is now of the age that equals the answer to everything according to Douglas Adams.  This time 42 years ago I was walking with my then wife from our East 86th Street apartment to Lennox Hill Hospital.  She had been having contractions since we got up in the AM and it was a month early.  We still had two Lamaze classes to go.  So we were kind of thinking Braxton Hicks contractions.  We split a beer on the recommendation of her doc and just hung out in the kitchen of the apartment for a while.  But she was kind of serious about the whole contraction thing so we decided to take a walk towards the hospital 

It is slightly less than half a mile from our apartment to Lennox Hill.  So we hoofed it.  My wife was good with that.  We were a little younger then.  We got to the hospital and sure enough she was sufficiently dilated to warrant staying there.  So we stayed.  Watched a Red Sox game (the Red Sox lost to the Minnesota Twins 8-2 but beat them on the 1st and the 3rd so it worked out) and some Star Trek.   Thirteen hours later my son Alex decided he could no longer avoid the trip and arrived.

He is named Alex because he wasn't due for a month and we hadn't really worked out a name yet.  So we hit the name book while sitting in the kitchen and grabbed the first one we liked.  I'm a Junior and never really liked it.  So we gave him a unique first name and a middle name that matched my father's first and her father's middle (William).  But Alex it was.  

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