We evidently met several times before I realized I'd already met her.
I'd just come out of a bad break-up and I'm really lousy at remembering and recognizing faces and names.
My adle-headedness didn't matter much though, since she was dating some other schmuck at the time. Did I mention that this was in college? She was a frosh and I was a 6th year senior (5 year gap, for those who don't want to do the math themselves). Apparently she thought I was too old until she saw me playing with a bunch of kids and a laser pointer (back when they were still novel) and realized I'm really only about thirteen. But I digress.
Anyway, a year or so later I (finally) graduated (hey, when you switch majors from Journalism to Engineering, not much transfers!
) and moved 1500 miles away to take a job on the left coast of darkness (California). She broke up with the other schmuck, and we started talking on the phone regularly. A year later we admitted we were actually phone dating (those bills
still give me nightmares). Almost a year after that, I moved back to Texas. Since I was now only 150 miles away, we got engaged a year later, and married a year after that. After only another eighteen months, we decided that we were ready to live together, so I moved to Houston where she was in grad school. We didn't want to rush into anything, you see.
Next month will be nine whole years, and we're ~700 miles away from Houston, but still living in the same house, so I guess that's a good sign.
The only dark patch is that we (that's the "marital we" -- usually means only
one of us) have been waiting for her to finish her Ph.D. to have kids: she's done now, so I guess my days as an only child are numbered.
That's what I tell people when they ask when we're having kids (after six years or so, they really start to pester), I'd tell them that I like being an only child. It's just odd enough that they don't quite know what to make of it, so they get confused and stop asking: problem solved.
