Truth is Not Stranger Than Fiction

The Grinch and I met when I was 16 and he was 18. If I tell you the whole story, it would embarrass the pants off of him, but suffice to say that I saw him and had an immediate crush on him. It was two years before we dated and we've been together more or less ever since.

I used to love to tell the story, but over the summer when someone asked us on our 11th wedding anniversary, "So how'd you meet?" Grinch interrupted me, "NO! It's so boring! Make up something else. ANYTHING." So here are some scenarios that we're going to throw out from now on that are way more interesting than the truth and get way better responses than just, "Awwwww!"

1. He was a bush pilot in Africa and I was working on a wildlife reserve. One day, I stormed into his camp to complain about him flying too low over the giraffe mating grounds and it was love at first sight.

2. I was a flight deck officer on the aircraft carrier U.S.S. WhatevernameIcanthinkof and he was a hotshot pilot. I regularly criticized his landings, even though they were perfect. We argued a lot, but he eventually melted my cold, hard heart and swept me off my feet with a Bach guitar serenade.

3. We met one summer while backpacking through Europe. We first saw each other on the tube in London, then in line at the Louvre, again at the Brandenburg Gate before we finally got up the nerve to introduce ourselves on the Spanish Steps.

4. He was a front-runner for the Nobel Prize for Physics, I was a reporter for the New York Times. I was supposed to do a quick interview with him for a brief profile, but our interview turned into lunch, turned into dinner, turned into a glass of wine.... The profile had to be written by someone else because I ended up compromising my objectivity. Eh-hem.

5. He was my parole officer.

See? All of those are WAY more interesting than, "We worked at the same drugstore in high school."