The Garden of the Blind

This evening, my mom told me that we’ve finally become an annoying engaged couple. We had done really well, but as the final date draws near, we’ve become more selfish and have been ignoring other people with blind disregard. She’s right. As I come down the home stretch towards this milestone, I’ve become quite oblivious to everything but her. I’ve neglected friends and family, for which I apologize. Once I’m married, I’ll probably lose some friends almost completely, and so for them, I wish them well and thank them for stretching my mind and character.

So, with my wedding coming up on Friday, I’ve decided to go with a theme this week. We’re having Very Special Wedding episodes until Friday, at which point the show is going on hiatus.

Today, a story from when we met:

I’m an insomniac. I rarely get to sleep before midnight, and it is not uncommon for me to be awake at 3 or 4 in the morning. During my sophomore year of college, my roommate would be in bed early every night, and even though we had been friends for many years, he was unaware of my peculiar sleep patterns. One night after restlessly trying to do some homework while watching a late night showing of a Bond movie, I crawled into bed sometime after 4. Either he was already awake, or my efforts to get into the top bunk woke him, because he started asking me about why I couldn’t sleep.

At this point, I was ready for bed, and the conversation wasn’t helping. His concern was genuine, and he felt that maybe my problem was that I didn’t have enough of a social life. This may have been true, but I was quite content with my level of socialization, even if it was far less than his (this is another area in which we differ). I didn’t feel like explaining this, and I just wanted to get to bed, and so I let him follow the Commitment Pattern to its ultimate conclusion and agreed to go to a football game with him, even though I didn’t like football (the things I’ll do to get some sleep).

At the game, we sat with two girls he had picked up at a tailgate party (hosted by the Honors Department), and somehow I wound up on the end next to this short girl I’d never met before. Since I care nothing for football, I struck up a conversation with her, and soon discovered that she had been a math major, and we shared a birthday. It was love at first chat, at a noisy football game on a beautiful Rosh Hashanah.