There won’t be any posts Thursday or Friday but that’s a good thing. Megan and I will be on our way to a bed and breakfast nestled in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. Our 10th anniversary is on Friday and she agreed to do something that I’ve always wanted to do – be in New England during peak fall foliage season. We both can’t wait to get out of here tomorrow and take a nice scenic drive from Boston to our final destination in Hart’s Location, NH. (Bonus points go to anyone who knows the importance Hart’s Location plays in national politics without searching online first).
It got me to thinking about a bunch of “what ifs?” in terms of Megan and I being together for such a long time. That’s meant to be a positive train of thought, as in “What if [X event] happened / didn’t happen and we never wound up being together?” type of ideas. I’d like to bring up some of these that have been fodder for thought in my head the past month as we approach this cool milestone.
What if Megan hadn’t dated other people that I knew, thus putting her on my radar? We both dated a wide range of people but I met her on her first day on campus because some Delts had moved her stuff into the dorm. Fraternity guys at Bradley move freshmen’s luggage for two reasons. One is to recruit potential pledges and let them know about your fraternity. The other reason, and most would agree this was the main factor, was to scout out the freshmen class of women.
What if my big brother in the fraternity, Matt Ullman, hadn’t offered to cover my fraternity dues my first semester freshmen year? My family was very poor and the only reason I was able to attend a private school like Bradley was through a combination of a generous scholarship and onerous student loans (almost paid off 15 years later!). My pride was initially to refuse the offer and drop out of Delta Tau Delta but Matt insisted I take the money and pay me back when I could. Best decision I ever made. I paid him back, lifelong friends have been acquired, and our circle of friends knew Megan and thus I got to know her better even though we didn’t begin to date until my super senior year (took 4.5 years to get through since I had to work in the summer to pay for school).
What if Michael Quintos, who got my foot in the door at CCC Information Services as a temp the semester before I graduated, hadn’t offered me a job? My parents by that time had moved from Detroit to Phoenix and so I went out there for about 3 weeks after graduation (December 1994). At several times during the long drive from Peoria, IL to Phoenix, AZ I bawled my eyes out because I wasn’t sure if our relationship would last with us being so far apart. Michael offered me a job and I began working in Chicago on January 25, 1995. Chicago, of course, is a heckuva lot closer to Peoria than Phoenix and since Megan still had a year and a half left of school, being within driving distance was a Godsend. The scary part of all of this was I had an interview with Enterprise Rent-A-Car in Phoenix (hey, there’s not a lot of jobs out there in 1994 for marketing majors with ‘B’ averages). I don’t disparage anyone working in jobs like that but I thank my lucky stars I’m on a different career path.
What if CCC didn’t have a 1-800 number? Look, I’ll be honest. I wasn’t making much at all in terms of salary coming out of college and Megan was still a student. At that stage in the relationship, especially a long distance one, being on the phone is an integral part. We took advantage of the 1-800 number the company had in order to save money on our phone bills. Being able to talk additional time on someone else’s dime was integral in us feeling closer to each other while we did the Long Distance Relationship thing for a year and a half.
Maybe I’ll go into more next week as far as when I proposed to her and other anecdotes around that time as we had the time of our lives living in Chicago as twentysomethings. But for now, we celebrate a decade together (in addition to 4+ years of dating). Life is good. And that’s coming from Ol’ Pessimist McFrown himself. My wife brings calm to my life and for that I owe her everything.
I love you, Megan. Let’s hope for 50 more years together.