In a message dated 12/20/2002 2:02:00 PM Mountain Standard Time, NJ-MEMORIES-D-request@rootsweb.com writes: > Did I miss something. Did you tell us your, How We Met story yet? No, I didn't; I was waiting to see whether there was any interest before I took the time to type it out. It looks as if there is, so here goes . . . The short answer is: He picked me up in a Laundromat. Now, here's (as Paul Harvey puts it) the Rest of the Story: It was July, 1963, and I'd moved into New York City about seven months earlier so that I could be close to my job. My roommate had gotten me involved in a ministry that she did on Saturdays: working with a bunch of slum kids in a West-Side neighborhood. Several young men from Columbia University also were in this ministry, and I got quite friendly with one of them. Early in the month he invited me to go with him to his church for a Sunday-evening meeting later on that month. I told him that I'd go -- and then blithely went off on a two-week vacation in North Carolina. The Sunday meeting was to be two days after I got back. I landed at Newark Airport on Friday evening in the middle of a ripping thunderstorm and got back to my apartment around ten p.m. -- and that was when I found out that my friend Richard from Columbia was stuck in a hospital in New Hampshire. He'd gone there for a weekend visit with a college friend and had broken his leg badly when a horse he was riding stumbled and fell. At first I figured that my date was off, but then it dawned on me that Richard would expect me to go anyway and let him know how the college-group meeting after the service went -- they were having a speaker from Teen Challenge. So I did just that. I arrived at the church about fifteen minutes early and didn't want to go inside just yet, so I stood outside looking into the window of the bookstore that was connected with the church. A young man whom I knew slightly and who was going to that church stopped and said hi to me. The person whom I really noticed was the fellow who was with him. I knew his face, but I couldn't say from where. I didn't know whether he'd gone to my church at some time, whether he'd gone to some Christian meetings that I'd been at, or whether he merely resembled someone I'd known. It was driving me crazy. This young guy happened to be ushering that evening, and all through the service I kept turning and looking at him to try to figure out where I knew him from. Little did I know that he was doing the same thing with me, since our eyes never connected. The following evening after getting home from work, I picked up the two large laundry bags that I had totally full from that two-week vacation and lugged them down to the Laundromat around the corner to get them washed. I was so short of clean clothing that I was wearing the same pink-and-white seersucker shirtwaist dress that I'd worn the night before at church. Well, when I walked into the Laundromat, there, leaning against a dryer, was the familiar-faced usher! Now I knew why his face was familiar -- we shopped at the same supermarket, rode the same subway, and washed our clothes at the same place, too. It just took a couple of smiles to break the ice -- and it turned out that he was looking for a new apartment, since he wanted to move out of the building where he was. I told him about the place next door to me, which was up for rent. It also turned out that we both enjoyed outdoor stuff like camping and hiking. A week or so later he telephoned me to tell me that he was interested in looking at the apartment and also that he'd like to take me out that Saturday. I had to turn him down; I was in a friend's wedding that day. Two weeks later he tried again -- and it was again for a Saturday when I was tied up socially. I was afraid that the guy would think that I was trying to brush him off, so I suggested the following week. It worked! We hiked around Central Park and took a boat ride and had a Bible study together -- and after a little over a year more of those hiking dates, we got engaged. We got married in July of 1965, just about two years after the evening in the Laundromat. And we're still very happily married! P. S. Great story, Diesel! And a bit of interest -- both your story and mine had a Richard in it who missed out . . . Doris in Colorado (Up2Nutrix@aol.com) "For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. -- Luke 2:11