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13

Charlie’s “100 Things Posts About Me”

#13. I started dating my wife on Friday the 13th.

Okay, so technically, by the time we’d actually started dating, the clock had rolled over to Saturday the 14th, but still! We spent most of Friday night chatting — getting to know each other and such. We were in college at the time; I was a junior, and my eventual-wife-to-be a newly-minted freshman. (Well, okay, so two-month-minted. That’s still new, if you’re talking about a car or a house or something. I suppose it’s less new if it’s a cheeseburger or a haircut you have in mind, but I tend to think that freshmen are more like Hummers than Whoppers. I’m old-fashioned that way.)

Anyway, we talked for hours. I think it was after two in the morning when we finally said good night, and by that time we had our first date planned. (Our first two, actually. Since I’m a big fat chicken, I waited for her to ask me to the girls-ask-the-guys dance scheduled for a couple weekends later before I got up the nerve to ask her on a pre-dance date. Yes, I was quite the budding Casanova. Quite.)

And the rest is history. Or damned near it, anyway, because that was a long-ass time ago. Whole wars have been fought since then. Presidents have come and gone. The McRib came, went, came again, left, came back, and then vanished again. Chevy Chase was still funny back then. Seriously. This was a long time ago.

We still celebrate the 13th as our first anniversary. Of course, we’ve been together for nearly thirteen years now. ‘Celebrate’ often means a bottle of wine with the tuna casserole we’re having for dinner, and an extra long hug when we get home from work. Sure, we get up for the big events — birthdays, wedding anniversaries, Christmas — but we have so many things we could celebrate that a few get lost in the shuffle. It happens — important days accumulate as you go through life together, until there’s something worth woo-hoo-ing about just about every week. Or so it seems. The people at Hallmark must have a damned field day with this shit.

Still, there’s something special about the first tentative steps in a relationship. One way or another, that first night of a new love is memorable, and ours is no different. Of course, we moved slowly, cautiously even, into our couplehood. Our first night was more ‘Breakfast Club‘ than ‘Debbie Does Dallas‘. (Hey, at least it wasn’t ‘Weekend at Bernie’s‘, right?)

And from our humble, halting beginnings on that chilly November night way back when, we’ve grown together, and grown up together. We recently bought a house, so we owe more money than we could have imagined existed back then. We’ve earned degrees, and held down steady jobs. (Okay, so there was never much question that she was going to carve a good life out for herself; I was the shaky one. But I probably don’t have to tell you that, if you’re reading this…)

So now it’s sort of a novelty. We were brought together under the sign of the black cat. The first Friday the 13th after Hallowe’en, too! Spoooo-oooky. But it’s cool. She didn’t turn out to be a zombie or a vampire or anything, so I think we did all right. Of course, she did own a black cat when I first met her. And she did pick up another one along the way, which her mom still has. And there’s that whole not-casting-a-reflection thing. She told me she lost it in a bike accident when she was a kid, but now I’m starting to wonder. I’ll have to keep an eye on that. Sure, I’m the one who looks like Frankenstein in the morning, but you can never tell with these things. Look at that chick from the Munsters. It can happen.