He Said…

Well, after that, I’d be a bit of a heel if I didn’t write an equally wonderful post about our anniversary, wouldn’t I? Like Melanie said, we met Junior year at Plano. To this day I think I could draw a seating chart of our table at Bennigan’s only because I remember where Melanie was sitting. I didn’t grow up in Plano, so I never felt like I quite fit in. As a self-absorbed, sulky teenager, I wondered (often aloud) why I had to go to school in the Texas equivalent of Brandon and Brenda Walsh’s West Beverly High (that’s a 90210 reference for those playing along). I have to admit, no one was more surprised than me when I ended up marrying a lifelong Plano girl. She wasn’t born in Plano, so at least I’ve got that going for me.

I’m not a big believer in fate, but it’s hard for me to think I came here for any other reason than to meet Melanie. The rest of my family has since moved back to Arkansas, but I stayed here with Melanie. I think that’s how it was supposed to be, and I couldn’t be happier with how it all turned out.

I won’t rehash the high school portion of our story because I don’t think I could top Melanie’s account of it. I feel lucky to have met Melanie when I did, and I’m happy we got to spend our college years together (college = another story for another post(s)). Had we met any earlier, who knows what might have happened. But we didn’t, and we’ve been together since 1993. That means I was making actual mix tapes for Melanie on cassette rather than making iPod playlists. We could stay out later than we should have because there were no cell phones to keep track of us. We could drive to New Mexico for a weekend because gas was around $.99/gal. The original version of 90210 was on the air, and some guy named Seinfeld had a show about nothing. Tech was still in the Southwest Conference, which no longer exists. In other words, times have changed a lot, but we’ve stayed together through it all and if she’ll put up with me, I think we’re in it for the long haul.

Happy Anniversary Melanie! Hopefully we’ll be writing these posts from somewhere in Napa Valley next year (heads up, grandparents).