Let’s Get Personal! Fantastic First Meets
Let’s have some fun with this. Every month, I’ll have a different random, innocuous question that I’d love to ask as well as answer, and I invite all to participate in the conversation. It’s always a kick to hear about others’ experiences, and I hope to meet some of you out there with a story to share. This month’s theme: Fantastic First Meets: Who has a great story to tell about how they met their partner? Was it serendipitous? Quirky? Romantic? Sizzling hot? Maybe it’s something that overlaps a number of different categories. The reason this particular theme comes to mind is because this month, I celebrate my 13th wedding anniversary with the most amazing partner anyone could ever have. Here’s my story: Seriously, it was fated. I saw this man many places before I actually, officially met him. It all started when a good friend convinced me to join a particular gym. It was a great kickboxing/muay thai/boxing gym, and I went nearly every day, which was partly the inspiration for my badass female character Taylor in Quicksilver Dreams. I was in the most amazing shape of my life. (You have this kind of time when you’re single, right?) One day, I was on a treadmill warming up, waiting for my muay thai class to start when I looked up and over to the guy on the treadmill next to mine. A tall, hot guy was getting on it, but…truly… I didn’t think anything of it. I was there for a serious workout, you know? And so was he. He had ear buds in, and barely spared me a glance before he was on the machine going at a serious pace. This was all, and I went on to finish my time on the cardio machine before joining the muay thai class that was starting. A week later, I was out with afore-mentioned good friend again. This time, we’d just parked in a parking garage in Pasadena, ready for a night out on the town. As we got out of our car, I saw the guy again. He was walking toward the elevator with another woman, and I still didn’t show much interest other than to say casually to my friend, “That guy goes to our gym.” I jokingly referred to him as the “treadmill guy”. Okay, fast forward a few months and you’ll find me on my college campus taking some graduate level classes. As I was walking down a particular hallway, I see him again. This time, he’s dressed in casual clothes, and is pushing a cart containing an overhead projector and an assortment of teaching materials. I was finding humor in that I’d seen this guy in so many places, and grinned at him. I sort of paused and stared at him as he walked by, likely giving him the impression that I knew him. He gave me a smile and cocked a finger at me in a friendly shootout and kept walking. Here’s the final jump in time which puts me a few quarters ahead in terms of the school calendar, nearly to the end of my academic program. There was a class I’d been avoiding, a science class. I had always been into literature and writing and cringed with the knowledge that I had to take this class. In spite of being a mature, graduate student, I was still suffering PTSD from my high school science classes and was not looking forward to taking this class. A friend who was going through the academic program with me pointed out a particular section of the class in...
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