How We Met
I actually met Johnie for the first time in 1992 when I was a graduate student at the University of Delaware. I can't remember if it was during the Summer or Winter break, but I wasn't taking classes at the time, and I was working in the Office of Affirmative Action and Multicultural Programs. One day, in comes this guy who I found out was the Director of Financial Aid (Johnie). He seemed very nice and invited me to have lunch with him. We had sandwiches in his office. Alas, it was nothing more than an administrator being nice to a student, for not only was he a few years older than me, he was also married.
Life went on.
As fate would have it, I ended up being hired as an Admissions Counselor at the University when I left my graduate program. Nope, we didn't get together then either. He was still married and therefore not in my radar. I dated a couple of very nice guys and one or two real bozos. However, none of them was "the one."
As you can probably guess, yes, Johnie did end up getting a divorce. But of course as with any romance story that needs to be more than two chapters long, the two lovers did not immediately look at each other and say...You!
Nope, I was dating someone seriously and then he dated someone seriously for about a year and a half.
I left the Admissions Office for the College of Engineering in 1997, but I would still see Johnie from time to time. In fact, I was his connection for email jokes. I think more than one person asked him who the woman was who was sending him all these funny, albeit sometimes off-color jokes, which he was forwarding to them.
Then the time came. As fate would have it, it was another lunch that finally "really" brought us together. Four colleagues were to all have lunch together: me, Johnie, Amy and Larry. At the last moment, Larry and Amy stood us up and decided to go to the Center for Black Culture's Block Party and Cook-out. So Johnie and I had lunch together by ourselves.
And one lunch led to another, and another and another. Then we were talking on the phone all the time... I was typing his paper for a class...he was helping me with my Statistics class... I was doing laundry over his house...and we were cooking dinner together and he was introducing me to Martinis.
To any who would ask me, I'd say we were "just friends." Finally though, I think we both kind of unconsciously said to ourselves, "Who are we kidding! We're dating."
And the rest is history...
