How I Met My Wife

My wife, Cat LaFlamme, is my soul-mate. She is a high school English teacher just like me. We share the same liberal Democratic politics. We share similar views on spirituality. I find it a real kick to have someone who is intelligent, who has similar tastes in books (we both adore science-fiction and fantasy), who was born the same year I was, and who loves camping just as I do.

I love having a wife who understands my jokes. It's a real kick to be able to say to her, "What Donne has done is done and cannot be undone," and hear her laugh because she gets it. (If you don't get it, look this up under a bio on the life of the 17th century English poet, John Donne.)

I love telling a story that happened early in our relationship. We were working on a political campaign together for the AFL-CIO. We had traveled out to a neighborhood where we were going door-to-door to get out the vote for an election. I had recently become single again. We had known each other for a while through our work for our union and for the Democratic Party. I was interested in her, but each time I had called about political work, a man had answered the phone. Was he her husband? boyfriend? son? I had to find out.

I came up with a very clever method to answer my question. As we drove home, I asked her if she would be available for our next outing. She said that she probably would.

"I'll give you a call later this week to find out," I promised.

"Good," she responded.

"By the way," I said, "it's all right if I leave a message with that man who usually answers the phone, isn't it?"

"What man?"

"Well, I usually get some man when I call you."

"Oh, you must mean my son."

"So, he's your son, okay."

"Yes, he's my son."

I silently congratulated myself on my ability to ferret out this information. A couple of weeks later we went out on our first date. A couple of months later, we were engaged. Some time after this, I asked her if she recalled our conversation of that day.

"Recall?" she said, "Of course, I recall it. That's the day I knew I had you."

I was had before I even knew it.

Wanna stay "had" too.