Internet Chatroom, 1996
He was dumped down the road from my house.
Male corgi mix and I named him Scruffy.
The second time around was (is) the best.
Met her at a dinner for employees and their families when we started up a new laboratory facility.
dunkin donuts
She was an 18 yr old visiting family in Ca. I saw her in the Mainside NCO club, Camp Pendleton. We married 5 weeks later. Almost 35 years ago.
Walking into the house, he slammed the door. At least thirty people milled around in the living room, laughing and drinking beer. "Crap," he thought, "my brother is having another God damned party! I don't have the time to deal with this."
He maneuvered his way through the crowd, leaving a wake of spilled beer and mutters. He knew nobody would notice any new stains on the tangerine-painted walls. That particular color was his parent's idea of compromise - Mom wanted red, Dad wanted yellow. The result – the sunny side of tangerine It was, at best, putrid.
Jockeying his way to the stairs, he blew off the crowd, intent on spending the rest of that night by himself.
Waiting on the stairs, a surprise.
He turned the corner, to go up the stairs and found more beer swilling teens. Amidst the vertical crowd sat a young girl, quiet as a mouse.
She had brown hair, brown eyes, bangs to her eyebrows with long, straight hair running to her shoulders. Wearing jeans and a white oxford shirt, colored with little stars and stripes. The little stars, a pale blue, were just the color of his eyes.
He stopped, looked into her eyes and his world stopped – then tilted.
For a moment, it was if the party vanished, and fell silent. Who was this girl, this brown eyed beauty? What was she doing in his house? Why did he have this feeling that something was...different? For those few moments, they stared at each other, intrigued, but not uttering a sound. The tension between them was palpable, almost electric.
Years later, he would remember that she was wearing a possessive grin, like a girl with a new piece of jewelry.
There was something here –they both knew it, but neither could put it into words. How do you put this in words? They were both too young, too new, even trying was out of the question. He was 17, she, 15. They were speachless in the moment.
Then that instant, a long skinny instant, was over. The boisterous party bulled its way back into his head again, as he slipped past her and silently up the stairs, finding the solitude of his room.
What would she have done, if I had said to her what I know now?
"You are going to marry me, and we will have three children. Twenty years down the road, we will still be married - but only because you love me."
I love you, my wife.
Merry Christmas.
PS - if you ever cut your hair, I get the Mustang back.
...Adirondack Balloon Festival, Fall 1979.
It was a drive by.
My friend and I in his pickup truck drove by, I saw her, told him too stop. 15 years later, she is still the love of my life. The one driving force beside me that has stuck with me in the darkest of times. She makes me complete. She is my heart, She has my heart. I would rather die, than live without Her.
I would like to meet the love of my life...
I could tell you mine, but it would kill this thread. :-(
I met my first husband at the Rabbi's bagel breakfast hosted for military personnel in San Antonio (1968). I met my second husband at a friend's bad movie night.
I met my angel while playing a game called "Acrophobia" on the internet. Been married over 8 years now. We were over 2000 miles apart.
She was on the short side, a little quiet, but very attentive, very cooperative, always willing to see things my way. We have been friends since that first meeting.
Sure, I push her buttons every now and then, but shes almost never a turn off. I miss her when she is not around, and I wish I could take her everywhere I go.
Her name is Tivo.
I put a personal ad in The Village Voice in November of 1979, and she answered it. We got married in June of 1980. We're still together.
bump for later
At one of those old-fashioned drive in restaurants after a fraternity party. I was stuck with a broken radiator hose in a 3-year-old '66 Mustang. A real cutie stopped in her car with two girlfriends and inquired about the problem.
January 1967. The end of my pledge semester for my fraternity (sophomore), and we are directed to sell dance tickets. We pay if they are sold, or not. I put off selling them until the night before the dance.
I go to my hometown and drive by the Jack-in-the-box on Whittier Blvd. fairly late at night-a Friday night, I seem to recall.
Two girls were there. The younger sister of a friend, and her friend, a cute brunette. I sell them dance tickets, for a discount, hoping to see the brunette at the dance the next night.
They showed up for the dance, I spent time with the target of my interest--the cute brunette.
Married Jan. 1968, we will celebrate 39 yrs. of marriage later this month. Some wonderful, some pretty rocky, a lot in between.
We have spent over 2/3's of our lives together. Likely we will be in Santa Barbara to celebrate, as we often do these days.
I was 19 years old and the part time choir director of the choir she was in. She was 15 at the time. We traveled two months later to a neighboring county where I knew the county judge and he issued a marriage license for us. We were secretly married and she continued to live at home for the next two months. That was 45 years ago. We have three children, six grandchildren. Of all the things the Lord has done for me in my life the greatest, short of sending His son to die for my sins, was putting her in my life when He did. I can honestly say I don't know what would have become of me absent her stabilizing influence in my life. I was young, impulsive, compulsive, immature, etc. She was, is and will forever be the light of my life!
I'll play since most we know think it's a good story.
I've always liked to push the envelope regarding dress codes at the parochial schools I attended. Some of the regs were ridiculous so I went out of my way to point it out, albeit perhaps somewhat subtly. The schools I went to, including the universities, didn't allow two-piece swimsuits, so I wore a one piece. It happened to be from Frederick's of Hollywood and had a thin strip of fabric connecting the bra section to the bikini section. From the back it looked like a bikini, from the front, well... it *was* a one-piece...
Step back a few years to a friend I knew from some undergraduate classes who had started medical school out on the west coast. We wrote fairly regularly for a year, and when I went out to the west coast to finish my major, I hoped to stir the pot a bit. When he didn't make the first move to ask me out, I finally worked up nerve to ask him. He told me to meet him at the pool, as he swam every day, and gave me a time. So I showed up more or less on time, and he showed up half an hour late, with two other guys who had his attention more than I did.
Cut to the lifeguard. One of their most despised duties was throwing out young ladies without proper attire. He saw me from the back and was dreading throwing me out. When he looked closer though, he saw I was definitely keeping to the letter of the law (if not the spirit) and he liked it. We struck up a conversation. I continued to go down to the pool in hopes of running into guy #1 but invariably ended up chatting with the lifeguard. A few days later he asked me out, a Gordon Lightfoot concert.
We were married about 11 months later, and that was 30 years ago. Oh, guy number one? After a military stint he came out of the closet and is now active in gay causes in the SW.