One of my quirks is that I wind up telling the story of how I met the love of my life to almost everyone I meet.
Maybe that's an exaggeration, but it comes up pretty often. My wife (the aforementioned love of my life, of course; let's make that part crystal clear) seems to find it amusing. The story goes like this:
We don't remember meeting, but we know it would have been during the first few days of our freshman year of college, all the way back in 1988. We were in a small seminar together, probably not much more than a dozen students, and we used to get lunch together sometimes -- although almost always with other classmates, too.
After the first year we never had another class together, but we'd see each other around campus. Eventually, we started dating during our senior year, and we stayed together for about a year afterward.
Then we broke up. And then, almost 20 years went by.
Then, we got together as a result of our 20th college reunion, and all I could say was basically "Zowie!" and "Hubba! Hubba!" and "Damn, girl!" (I might be dad-jokifying the experience a bit at this point, but you get the idea).
Since then, more than 12 years, we've never gone a day without talking. We were engaged within five months and got married less than a year later.
Now, I find myself saying things to her all the time like:
“Can you believe we used to date, and then we broke up, and now we're talking about who should pick up our daughter from Girl Scouts?”
“Can you believe we used to date, and then we broke up, and now we're playing a constant game of "love it or list it" when we talk about our hundred-year-old house in the suburbs?”
“Can you believe we used to date, and then we broke up, and now I'm telling our story to something like 170,000 people in a newsletter?”
There's more to this story, of course. There's more to all of our stories.
And, as I mentioned here recently, I've become passionate about the idea of finding a useful way at scale for tons of people to tell, save, and share their most important stories.
I may as well admit: While I have the whole idea sort of mapped in my head, between all the writing that I do, and living my dream life with my wife and daughter and arranging pickup from Girl Scouts and playing “love it or list it” with our house (etc., etc., etc.), it's all rolling out much more slowly and happenstance than I'd like.
When you think about it, isn't that how life works for most people? In fact, I think it makes it even more crucial to find ways to get the people we care about to share these kinds of stories, before everyone risks forgetting.
I dug up a few other "how I met the love of my life" narratives to get people to continue thinking like this. But I'm also going to ask you -- if you're up for it -- to share your similar stories in the comments.
Important: "love of my life" could mean so many different things to different people. Honestly, if you'd asked me this question say, 13 years ago, I'm sure I would have had a different answer, if I could even have come up with one. There's a very good chance it wouldn't have involved a person.
Anyway here are a few that I found that I thought were worth mentioning:
"I met my first husband at a nightclub. He was perfect for me, I should not have divorced him. I met my second husband, also now an ex, at my office, he was a client that my co-workers insisted I go out with."
"I met my wife after having dated her sister (one night only! That was plenty). Luckily my wife was a very different person, and we got along well. We have been married since 1975, and I think I might keep her."
"Last semester in college. Lucky me, there was an empty seat. We started talking outside the classroom before class each day and after about a month I asked her out on a date. After school ended we were inseparable all summer and in August I proposed. At the end of November we were married and began a life together. That was 51 years ago and I am still happily married to that beautiful lady."
"My wife is Taiwanese. We met at a Japanese language school. ... We dated/hung out, speaking only the most horrendous Japanese to each other. ... She went back to Taiwan and I went to visit her there ... At that point, I found out that she speaks English quite well, and in fact had been an English major at University."
"We worked in related software groups. ... She didn't realize it, but when she said my software was easier to use and worked better than IBM's, that was the ultimate come on. Together 25 years later. Can anyone out-geek that?"
And then, because I've become a bit of a Twainiac in my middle age:
"She said she never could or would love me – but she set herself the task of making a Christian of me. I said she would succeed, but that in the meantime, she would unwittingly dig a matrimonial pit and end by tumbling into it." —Mark Twain
OK. Hopefully that gets people going. I really do hope readers will be willing to share their stories! If you'd like to check out our previous installment about people's first childhood memories, you can find that entry here. Otherwise, see you in the comments!
7 other things …
Fifty-one Florida counties are under a state of emergency, with millions facing the prospect of evacuation ahead of Hurricane Milton. The storm weakened slightly but remains ferocious and could land a once-in-a-century direct hit on Tampa and St. Petersburg (expected Wednesday evening), engulfing the populous region with towering storm surges and turning debris from Helene’s devastation 12 days ago into projectiles. Tampa's Mayor Jane Castor: "If you choose to stay, you are going to die." (AP Tracker)
As the coronavirus tore through the world in 2020, and the United States and other countries confronted a shortage of tests designed to detect the illness, then-President Donald Trump secretly sent coveted tests to Russian President Vladimir Putin for his personal use, according to a new book due to be published next week by Washington Post associate editor (and my former boss) Bob Woodward. An unnamed Trump aide cited in the book indicated that Trump may have spoken to Putin as many as seven times since Trump left the White House in 2021. (Washington Post)
Here's Trump's full response: "None of these made up stories by Bob Woodward are true and are the work of a truly demented and deranged man who suffers from a debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome. Woodward is an angry, little man and is clearly upset because President Trump is successfully suing him because of the unauthorized publishing of recordings he made previously. President Trump gave him absolutely no access for this trash book that either belongs in the bargain bin of the fiction section of a discount bookstore or used as toilet tissue. Woodward is a total sleazebag who has lost it mentally, and he's slow, lethargic, incompetent and overall a boring person with no personality." - Steven Cheung, Communications Director. (Trump)
A new memo from Home Depot says corporate employees will have to try working in actual stores. The company plans to mandate that employees work eight-hour retail shifts at one of its stores every three months, Bloomberg reported. (Quartz)
The Supreme Court seemed poised on Tuesday to uphold a major gun regulation imposed by the Biden administration that requires background checks, serial numbers and sales records for the nearly untraceable firearms known as ghost guns. The weapons, which have been used in a growing number of crimes over the past decade, are typically assembled at home using parts, kits or pieces printed by 3D printers. (Washington Post)
TikTok faces new lawsuits filed by 13 U.S. states and the District of Columbia on Tuesday, accusing the popular social media platform of harming and failing to protect young people. The lawsuits expand Chinese-owned TikTok's legal fight with U.S. regulators, and seek new financial penalties against the company. (Reuters)
A son of Al Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden has been deported from France, where he lived for years painting landscapes in a Normandy village and barred from returning after posting comments on social media deemed to have glorified terrorism. "Mr Binladin, who has lived in the Orne region for several years as the spouse of a British national, posted comments on his social networks in 2023 that glorified terrorism," a French official said on X. (Jerusalem Post)
Thanks for reading. Photo credit: Photo by Ryan Holloway on Unsplash. Don’t forget about sharing your “love of my life” stories in the comments!