Joe and I celebrated our anniversary a week ago. Ingrid, Jack, Joe and I were driving back to Memphis from a Monroe family reunion in New Orleans. We had a really nice time, and the kids did remarkably well. (Of course, we had fairly low expectations--for our kids, not the family--going into the weekend. But still.)
Joe and I met our freshman year at Ole Miss (1996). Ole Miss is a smaller state school, and I had seen Joe around quite a bit. At the time, I didn't know his name was Joe, or really anything about him. I did know that he was friends with a good friend of mine, Emily, and I secretly thought he had the most attractive eyes I had ever seen, a really cute face, and seemed pretty funny (from afar). So, I guess I could say I was crushin' pretty hard on this random blond haired boy.
Well, early in November, Emily's and my composition class was canceled and we decided to hang out in The Grove. We were writing a letter to Emily's little brother, giving him pointers for his first date. (This included a very witty multiple choice test.) Surprisingly enough, Joe and a group of his friends walked by. They too had experienced class cancellation. (Oddly enough, this doesn't happen too often.) Emily waved to Joe, and he walked over to our table to say hi. Their conversation continued until his friends walked away, and Joe remained. At some point, he sat down with us and began to help write the Are You Ready For Your First Date Test. The three of us laughed and bantered witticisms back and forth for hours. At some point Emily whispered to Joe that I had a crush on him (ooooo). Now, I hadn't told Emily, but I guess it was pretty obvious. (At least to Emily.) So, Joe asked if we (Emily and I) wanted to all go out some time that weekend. (He wasn't super-brave, but he was also--at that point--not super interested in me.) Emily declined. I quickly gave him my dorm phone digits--4201. (Joe still has that peice of paper.)
I had to cancel our first date because I was going out with someone else at the same time, but Saturday night we did go out to dinner. It was there I fell in love. Joe was my very own Bill Nye the Science Guy. (I had a HUGE crush on Bill. Anyone with intense passion for academics is pretty cool to me.) When he nibbled his potato chips into a topographical map of New Orleans to explain why it could flood, I was his. So, that night I called the other guy and broke it off.
Six years of dating (with a short break up), we were married in Oxford. And we've lived happily ever after.
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