Thursday, September 20, 2012

How I Met Your Mother

I wrote the following on April 4, 2000, on the 2nd anniversary of the day I met my wife, Teresa....

Two years ago today, my cousin, Dan, and I had breakfast at the Shoney's in Montgomery Village. Our conversation gravitated towards the Easter play that was going to be performed at Montrose Baptist Church that evening, of which Dan was a cast member, and he said I might enjoy coming to the show. In fact, he said that there was a young lady in the cast that I might enjoy meeting. Though I had some reservations about going (I had gone to Montrose a year earlier and decided it really wasn't my kind of church), and I didn't really tell Dan I would go, I did end up going. Dan hadn't tried doing any match-making with me before, so I was intrigued.

I sat near the back and proceeded to watch the show. It was very well performed, though I was mostly occupied with trying to figure out who the young lady was that Dan had wanted me to meet, since he hadn't told me her name. After the show ended, Dan came over to where I was sitting and said he was getting a group of cast members together to go out and get something to eat, and that he would see if "Teresa" would go, too. She was backstage cleaning up. I still didn't know what she looked like. Dan said we would all meet at Bennigan's on Rockville Pike.

I headed over there in my Grand Am and met up with Dan and a few other people and we discovered Bennigan's was too crowded, and our wait would be a long one, so we told everyone to head over to Fritzbe's instead. I didn't know where it was, so I stood with Dan and a few others on the sidewalk outside of Bennigan's to direct people over to Fritzbe's that hadn't arrived yet. When a young lady in a Grand Am showed up, Dan went over to her car and told her we were going to Fritzbe's. After she pulled away, Dan said that she was the girl he wanted me to meet.

I followed Dan over to Fritzbe's and we went in. There were already about 5 or 6 people there, and Dan introduced me to them, including Teresa. We shook hands and Dan proceeded to sit down......before I could get a seat anywhere near Teresa. We spent the next hour or so on the same side of the table with two people between us, Dan included, not able to say one thing to each other the entire time we were there. In fact, there was one other person on the other side of me that didn't have anyone to talk to except for me, since he was on the end of the table, so, feeling obligated to talk to him, I was left out of most of the conversation at the other end of the table involving Teresa. So, there I was, wondering about that beautiful young lady on the other side of the table, not able to have any direct conversation with her, with the guy who wanted me to meet her sitting between us.

The evening finally ended, and as we were going out the door, I was able to at last say something to Teresa. As she walked to her car, I said, "Hey, you've got a Grand Am, too!" The next day, Dan asked me if I wanted him to get her phone number for me and see if she would be interested in going out. One month later (sorry, I'm a little slow), we went on our first date. Ten months later, I proposed to her, and we were married 5 months after that. Thanks, Dan, and you were right: I DID enjoy meeting this wonderful young lady, and I'm even happier every day to call her my wife.

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