Mom and Dad, how did you guys meet?
Ummm…. well…. uhhh…. we met at church.
But you guys don’t go to church.
Umm… uhhh… well we weren’t actually at church, we were near a church.
You were NEAR a church? I thought you met at college?
You’re right, we did meet in college. We met in a… uhhh… a poetry reading class… yeah… it was a poetry reading class…. poems about love and stuff like that…
C’mon, seriously… you did not! Besides, I thought you both studied completely different subjects, neither of which involved poetry.
Ummm… uhhh… yeah, well we did, you’re right, we only had a couple classes together in all the years we were there. But I used to….ummmm… I used to write poems about Biology for your Mom and she….
Shut up… you’re so lying… so, how did you really meet?
Okay, look… I know we’ve portrayed this image that we are both very wholesome and righteous… but the truth is… let’s see, how do I say this… the truth is… maybe you should sit down.
Why should I sit down?
Just sit down… see… your parents met in college at a… at a…. at a…..
Okay, look, we met at a Toga Party… there I said it… it was a Toga Party… a drunken, hedonistic Toga Party.
Kim and I met at a Toga Party at Colby College in early Fall 1986.
The details are vague these days, but yes, this is a true story. I don’t remember if this was the first night we actually spoke to each other but it was one of our first experiences together while “courting” and it’s the story we tell when people ask “how did you meet?”
Please don’t think any less of us.
Some friends in the dorm I lived in were throwing a party and the theme was bed sheet togas and kegs of cheap, shitty beer, because that’s a surefire way to have a good time. I found myself, mid-way through the evening, sitting next to one of my close friends, both of us on chairs that were perched precariously high atop a small table so that we were way above the mob-scene below. Between us sat a keg of Budweiser and we were repeatedly filling up soggy, beer soaked paper cubs that the crowd of guests held up to us like we were rock stars signing autographs. That’s when I saw her, this beautiful girl, wrapped up in a twin bed sheet that was decorated with a kind of floral pattern that looked like wallpaper you’d see in your great-grandmother’s house. I instantly wanted nothing more than to peel off that wallpaper!
I’d seen Kim around our dorm before, she was a freshman and I was a sophomore but we had never made any serious connection. But this night was different, maybe it was the sexy bed sheets we were wearing, maybe it was the beer, maybe it was the rockin’ 80’s tunes shaking the walls, maybe it was the beer, maybe it was just karma… or maybe it was the beer.
I don’t know, but this would be the night that changed our lives.
I was wrapped in a dark blue sheet. In college, if you had dark colored sheets, you didn’t have to wash them that often which was good because washing stuff meant hauling a giant bag of laundry down to the washing machines in the depths of your dorm basement and hustling pockets full of quarters from everyone you knew.
Around my waist was a three inch wide black, spiked and studded belt that belonged to my brother, I think maybe picked up on a semester abroad in England. It looked like something straight out of a Clash band photo… or a really bad gay porno movie. Wrapped around my head, like a headband, was a thin gold mesh scarf and that was topped off with a pair of dark black sunglasses. I looked like a circa-1980’s Jim McMahon, except I was wearing a dark blue toga… and a gay porn belt.
You can see why she thought that was hot, right?
I don’t remember if we “hooked-up” that night. Maybe we passed out somewhere, it’s not really important. What’s important is that this is how Kim and I finally connected, on a fine evening of Greek culture and sophistication.
Our relationship is still going strong, 27 years later, with 20 of those years married and fifteen of those raising kids. We’ve got a good thing and we try not to take it for granted. It’s not always easy, but we make it work and when things are challenging, when the kids are driving us up a wall, it’s good to look back on those early days when life was more carefree.
The best thing about this story… there are no photographs… at least none that we are aware of!
How did you meet your spouse, boyfriend, girlfriend, pet? Please share your stories!
The Brown Road Chronicles 