Anniversaries

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So, two years ago today we drove off to Raleigh and got hitched. (I don’t know what it says about our ability to remember dates that if that blog post didn’t exist, we’d still be looking for our marriage certificate to figure out what day we got married.)

Anyway, we met at a science fiction convention (the International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts in 2001), as you do. It was in Ft. Lauderdale, so that’s where we met, despite Christopher having recently moved back to Kentucky. Kelly Link introduced us, which is also not that unique a story. Nothing as interesting as Jeff Ford’s story of meeting his wife Lynn:

The Wolfman mask is a shout-out to my wife, Lynn.  Sept. 1st was our 27th wedding anniversary.  Our first date involved a wolfman mask, a bottle of tequilla, climbing a mountain, discovering an abandon shack with a letter in it written in pencil from 1932 that said "Love You Forever" in the salutation.  That was our first date and we’ve lived together ever since. 

For our part, what actually was our first date is still an open topic of debate. There’s one school of thought that says it involves an underground art show, dancing to John Hammond covers of Tom Waits in a sad hotel room someone lived in, packaging up a camera in the middle of the night and phoning Richard Butner (otherwise known as The Best Man and Web Bunny). That school is SO overly optimistic. I might concede that a Shakespeare in the park night a few weeks later was a real date, but honestly? I think it was when we went out to a fancy dinner at a chichi Pacific Rim-influenced restaurant where C knew the chef, drank martinis, and agreed that we liked each other; then I turned the wrong way down a one-way street on the way to a movie theater where we watched the Most Depressing French movie ever. THAT was definitely our first date.

14 thoughts on “Anniversaries”

  1. Christopher

    The movie was Quebecois. And that was like our third or fourth date.
    Let’s see, paper’s first and the metals and precious stones are all at twenty years and beyond. Is the second “The Comment Thread” anniversary? Love you, sweetie.

  6. ed

    Yes, happy happy anniversary! I don’t know what it is about conventions that has one finding another. But it’s certainly a lot more fun than a cotillion dance. May you have many more anniversaries to come. 🙂

  9. Jenny Davidson

    When I was little, having never HEARD the phrase “many happy returns” I was quite puzzled by the Paddington Bear “menny happy returns” thing–but that is indeed the appropriate phrase…. (weirdly echoing the completely-opposite-in-sentiment Thomas Hardy “done because we are too menny”!)

  13. Richard

    I don’t care when the official first date was (but that phone call was pretty damn funny). Here’s to many many more years.

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