for the Queen on her birthday

For the Queen's birthday I wanted to tell the story of waaaay back when ...

I first noticed her. (I say that because she apparently already knew who I was, but I had no idea who she was.) It was a brisk, blustery day in late fall New England. The leaves were perfect, and so was the quad for watching the sights pass by. Stationed in a perfect corner room in Wood Hall, a building which no longer exists in the small campus of Gordon College, two or three of my friends and I would sit playing games and generally staring out the window watching attractive women pass by. (I'd like to offer an excuse for my behavior, but then, as now, there is really no excuse. At least the story has a happy ending!)

My girlfriend of four years had recently dumped me-- she lived 500 miles away and didn't think a long-distance relationship would work, so my interest in the greater world at large had significantly increased. Anyway, that day was pretty special, because that was the day that I saw my wife. She was a gorgeous brunette, cruising in between some of her friends on her way to class, and I instantly fell in 'curiousity' with her. Small problem. Short of running after her and demanding her name, a classic movie technique but not one that scared little me would ever attempt, I had no way of ever seeing her again.

Actually-- not a problem at all. Thanks to one of the world's worst ideas (really-- it was so bad that it was literally scrapped the next year), Gordon had decided to put every person on campus in a photo directory with all their home address info along with phone number if they so desired, etc. It was basically FaceBook without any privacy settings whatsoever... I know, insert obvious joke here. Anyways, we used it for really mature things like giving away phone numbers of friends to complete strangers or having our own March Madness tournament to determine once for all the most attractive people on campus-- stuff like that. In this case, though, it allowed me to check the entire senior class (which took about two hours) for who my mystery girl was-- she was clearly an upperclassman, with sophisticated looks and taste... I could tell just my looking at her. Actually, I couldn't, because two hours later I had determined that she wasn't a senior. The real moral here is that I'm glad her maiden name began with a C, because almost six hours later I found her in the FRESHMAN class. Now that's creepy with a capital C.

And speaking of creepy (here's a happy photo four years later at graduation), note the awful facial hair I'm sporting. I look like I'm ready to charge into a suburban wading pool thinking it's the great outdoors. Back to the story: now I knew who she was, and STILL had no way to meet her. Six hours of stalking wasted for nothing. But that all changed one fateful morning in the cafeteria. I saw her standing by the microwaves warming up a bagel, fearlessly walked over and said, "Hey-- it sure gets warm over here by the toasters in the morning!" And it worked!

By the way, I'm still pretty sure that was the WORST pickup line in the history of such things... but I just wanted the Queen on her birthday to remember our first meeting ten-odd years ago. Good night all!