When I was a young girl, I went to a fortuneteller who read tea

leaves and who told me I would be meeting kings and queens. I

interpreted that to mean I was going to be a great dancer. I was

wrong.

When I married Jerry Ford, I really thought I was marrying a

lawyer, and he would practice law until it was time for him to

retire, and we would spend the quiet life of a medium-sized city in

Grand Rapids, Michigan. I was wrong again.

Both of these errors can be laid to a failure of imagination, but

I make other kinds of mistakes too.

When we married on a Friday, because it was fall, and in the

fall we couldn t miss a Saturday football game, I chose Friday,

October 15, and all the ushers were furious because they were duck

hunters and October 15 was the opening of the duck season.

That s one of the reasons I first thought about calling this book

Whoops! (I also wanted to get some sex into it, so it would outsell

Jerry s.)