As my 23rd wedding anniversary looms tomorrow, I find myself thinking back to when I first met Rebekah when I was a Sophomore at Wartburg College in Waverly, Iowa.
My Freshman year, to put it mildly, did not go well. If it was not for my French Grades, I had a dean of students who wanted to kick my butt out of school in the worst way. I was living proof that even at a Lutheran college you can get in trouble by partying too hard. (Oh, that Dean of Students? SHE ended up getting fired because she was having an affair with the guy who was the head Comptroller...actually, they both got fired) I ended up doing really well with my studies in Paris that May Term of my Freshman year. I got all A's, and on top of that, I ended up falling-hard, for gorgeous Tunisian student who was studying law in Paris.It seemed like the stuff of a short story, unsophisticated, ex-jock me now I had a girlfriend who looked like a Vegas showgirl, and was outrageously intelligent AND very sweet. To this day, I still cannot see what she saw in me, but it sure gave my self esteem a much needed boost, after brutally difficult Freshman year (Ok, I admit most of my problems were self inflicted)
OK, back to my Sophomore year. I'm still Carrying the torch for Annie. I'm at the first French Club meeting of the year. In this meeting, a Red-Headed Freshman more or less took over the meeting with a bunch of Roberts Rules of Order stuff. She has made a career out of organizing things ever since then. I found out her name was Becky and she was from the South Side of Chicago.(That conjures up scenes of urban blight. Her part of the South Side was very Irish-lot's of cops and fireman...you cannot swing a dead cat without hitting a pub where she grew up) You need to know this about Becky: She's a Republican from a Democratic city, German Protestant from an Irish Catholic Neighborhood, and a Cubs fan in White Sox Territory. You don't think she likes a good argument? She can smell conflict the way Donald Rumsfeld could when he was Secretary of Defense.
I became friends with her. I used to eat lunch with her and her friend Pat D'Aprix very regularly. I Found out she had a boyfriend back in Chicago. She showed me a picture of him, and I have to say that I was stunned how such a good looking young woman could be going out with a guy who was FRUGLY. Later that fall, she invited me to a party. She looked absolutely stunning in her black, plunging top that was framed with gorgeous, Rapunzel-type flowing red locks that went down to her backside-but I felt really weird about going to a dance with another guy's girlfriend. I left her at the dance.
As luck, or destiny would have it, a few weeks later, a lousy band doing terrible covers of Beatle's songs came to our aid. By this time, I was over Annie, and she had broken up with her boyfriend. This band was so bad, we ended up leaving the dance and we did a lot of talking. We ended up back at her room in Grossman Hall, when somebody rang a fire alarm. The entire dorm saw us together and put 2+2 together really quickly. That was December 7th, 1980. We have been an Item ever since. We have been through thin and thick: people were taking bets that I would dump Becky during my Junior year in France. We ended up writing to each other every day. Sometimes multiple letters-it was a very different era pre-internet. When she came to Paris to study at L'Alliance Francaise for May Term, I went up to Paris to visit her. I rode up in a car full of guys who were going to the Front National convention in Paris. These guys were hyper-right wing, and scary(Black clothes and shaved heads...and that was the two girls in the car)-but it was a cheap ride to Paris from Montpellier. In 1982, Le Front National was about the ONLY political group in France who admired Ronald Reagan. They loved him because he wouldn't take any crap from the Soviets.
I had really made up my mind that this was the woman I wanted to marry...after going out with her about a month. I had a lot of time to reflect about our relationship during that year in France. When I saw Becky at the boarding house She was staying at( La Pension Ladagnous), I kept going "When we are married"-this and "When we are married"-that, she politely reminded me that I had not yet asked her for her hand. "What a Putz! How stupid of me!". So I got down on bended knee and asked her to marry me.
To think that I went to Wartburg College to primarily study French. People aske me that since I am a Registred Nurse now, that do I feel like I wasted my time getting a French Degree. I tell people that I got a smart, beautiful wife who has given me two really cool kids-I also think I got a good Liberal Arts education out of the deal. I feel like it was a bargain. I cook for her and she puts all of our electronic crap together, like our DVD, Direct TV and Stereos. If it was not for her, I would be stuck just listeningto an old AM-FM radio.Oh, yeah-She's still awfully pleasant on the eye, as well. For a guy who could not buy a date in High School, I think I did pretty well after 23 years.
PS-If your marriage can survive living with your in-laws, you can survive anything. But THAT's a story for another time.
