Last night at work I was eavesdropping on a conversation between two women in the break room. Both said they’d met their husbands at previous jobs, and believe most people meet their spouses that way.
I’m not sure if that’s statistically correct, but Toney and I also met at work, in Atlanta.
I’d moved to the city with a girlfriend, we’d maintained for a year or so, then everything went circling down the ol’ turd-catcher. And suddenly I was lonely and afloat (if you’ll excuse the phrase, coming in such close proximity to “turd”) in a place with no drinking buddies.
And mister, that’s not a good situation…
So, for the only time in my life, I started “dating.” Previously I’d had very little experience with such things; I’d had two longish relationships, that took up the bulk of my adult life. So dating, and “playing the field,” was almost completely foreign to me.
And it blew mule. I started asking women out, on a semi-regular basis, and felt NOTHING for any of them. I was probably still in some kind of mourning from the just-collapsed relationship, I’m not sure, but my heart just wasn’t in it.
I went out with a girl a couple of times, and she sent me a long letter – to my apartment – saying she was IN LOVE with me. Love?! You’ve got to be kidding! And in a letter?? Man, that chick was even more messed-up than I was…
Next!
A few clearly hated me, or whatever, and that’s perfectly understandable. It wouldn’t be fair to criticize a person for such a reaction… But in several instances it was nothing more than a lack of compatibility, as it pertains to humor. If we can’t see eye to eye on what’s funny, and what isn’t, there’s no hope whatsoever. I mean, seriously.
I never actually did this, but a good test for a prospective girlfriend might be to sit with her on a bench inside a mall – and just see what happens. If she starts critiquing shoes and handbags, you might have a problem. But if she instinctively begins mocking the passersby, she’s very likely a keeper. Especially if her observations are creative and biting.
Anyway, I was on one of those horrible dates, and a woman told me a story that still makes me laugh. She said she was asleep one night, and was awakened by a loud groaning noise. Confused, she sat straight up in bed – just as a water pipe exploded in the wall beside her, sending her flying ass-over-tits across the bedroom.
I mean, how could a person not laugh at such a thing? That shit’s hilarious, right? Well, this one was offended by my reaction, and once again: next!
Toney worked for the same Big Ass Record Company I did, and seemed interesting. She hung around with the hipsters, but didn’t really participate in the high-obnoxiousness. I did some light detective work, and it appeared she wasn’t dating anyone. So I asked her out.
And it was a bumpy start, but not because of a humor-gap, or anything like that. No, we made a great team, almost from the beginning. It had more to do with my ex, her ex, and all that confusing crapola.
But the point is, we kinda confirm (anectdotally), last night’s break room theory. So, I’m going to end this brief update with a request for further information: where did you meet your significant others? Is work where it usually happens?
Help me out, won’t you? I need the date-data.
And I’ll see ya tomorrow.
My husband and i also met at work 27 years ago. We started on the same day. I lasted nine years at that job and he lasted 23 years (sucker!!).
I always say that there are a lot of things we don’t have in common (music, movies) but we have EXACTLY the same sense of humour and we would pass the ‘siting on the mall seat and commenting on the people passing by’ test.
Drew,
Shame on you!
I’ve never paid for sex in my life. And that’s really pissed off a lot of prostitutes.
“……if she instinctively begins mocking the passersby, she’s very likely a keeper. Especially if her observations are creative and biting.”
I don’t know how creative I am, but we would have gotten along just fine, Jeff ( had you been born somewhere north of 1950).
I met my husband through a blind date, and it had nothing to do with work. In fact, I never dated anyone I met through work.
Mutual friend hooked us up at an AIDS benefit my company was putting on. That was almost 22 years ago. We actually still talk to the guy!
Happy Tuesday, Surfers!
Met mine at an antique auction. I fell in love with her blue framed sunglasses. I then returned home to a girl I was dating at the time.
The girl I was dating was brutally murdered, so a week later I married an old girlfriend. That lasted 4 months. Two years later I married the girl in the blue sunglasses, and we just celebrated 20 years together.
The further evidence page reminds me of the idiot tree sitters that just came down in Berkeley. we’ve had to watch these morons for the last 22 months.
I hate hippies.
Date data: No significant other’s met at work. Met ex-husband while out cruising (you know, “ridin’ around”), met current SO on a blind date.
But the crying over the dead trees???? That is very disturbing. These people have obviously not lost a human to death. What in the far side hell?
I didn’t meet DH at work but I met his best friend there. Me and the best friend didn’t work out but we’ve been married for 4 yrs now.
We would so pass the humor test. Our humor is spot on with each other. Music and movie tastes are alot different but we can always crack a joke with each other.
Online in a video game, god’s honest truth. Met the first one at work tho. Never buy car parts or get a spouse at JC Penney.
At work, Arby’s to be specific. Does anyone miss the Super? 13 years later and we’re still together. Everyday is just another day in paradise.
I met my wife in the forest! we were totallly happy until she was cut down in mid life and turned into dining romm furniture! My friends and I still cry about it!
it was funnier when I spelled room correctly!
Met the STBX at the bar at his sister’s wedding. Prolly not a good thing to base a life on, the shared love of G&Ts.
Met the current Mr Wonderful online. Um….here, AAMOF.
Not married, but the current future ex was at a bar. She was there for a Tapes n Tapes show, I believe I was there to heckle a rockabilly band. And so on….
With regard to yesterday’s question… i passed a liquor store that had a sign advertising “Banana Bread Beer.” I like beer. I love banana bread. And I can’t think of many things more disgusting than the idea of “banana Bread Beer.” BLech.
The ex was my high school girlfriend’s best friend (stalker). We spent almost 2 decades together until I couldn’t take it anymore. Sense of humor is a big one, as well as after-hours nagging and her thrice-daily ‘I’m so fat and you’re such a failure’ monologue.
I’m happier than I’ve ever been with the girl o’ my dreams, whom I met online.
Um, here, actually.
Met my hubby at church camp right before we started high school. Didn’t start dating until several years later, when I was in college and he was in the military. Can’t imagine trying to live with any of the men I’ve ever worked with.
met at work. been together for 17yrs – married for 9
Yep…met at work. We were both twenty-two-year-old, first-year teachers in the same school building. We’ve been together for twelve years and are going strong (as far as I know, anyway)!
JR and i met in school in 1985, and we just had our 18th anniversary. Three more years!!!
No fishing off the company pier.
The Banana Bread Beer is actually pretty good.
At work. He was ‘training’ me. Got to love a sarcastic butthead that puts a used bandaid in your rolodex under B. So I bought a tiger beat magazine and put Ricky Martin on his cube walls at work. We’ve now been married 8 years and have 2 little monkeys.
I agree with staying out of company ink – in theory.
Don’t date within your own work group or your boss. That will come back to bite you. A neighboring group isn’t so bad. If he ticks you off, whatever.
But where the heck else would I have met someone? A bar? I think not.
BTW, I am not quite sure what those things are in the pic on the opening page but I know my grandmother used to have something like them growing out of three place on her ears, nose and scalp.
Halloween Party.
Lester and I met at the office. We worked in different departments, and would occasionally cross paths.
HUMOR is HUGE!
He made me laugh, which kept me making excuses!
Rusty, they’re dates.
Met my husband at work. He was designing machines and I was drawing them. Loved the one-on-one consultations. Married 16 years.
Wally and I also met at work. We were both in college and he was fresh out of the Army(active duty). It was at a Lonestar Steakhouse. He was a line cook and I was a bartender. I got fired for pouring him drinks while he was working and he got promoted! I had to ask him out everyday for a month before he agreed to go out with me, said I was too wild for him. That was 10 years ago(married for 7). And our senses’ of humor are also spot on. That is why we both enjoy the WVSR so much!
My fiancee actually met me as my intern! That was quite some time ago, but we laugh at it now… good thing Bill Clinton made it ok!
Met her in Ritz Camera where she worked. Couldn’t bring myself to ask her out until she started offering me “expired” film for nothing whenever I stopped in the store.
I met my wife at here work. She was a DJ that did a local music show, and I was in one of the bands she interviewed. She is a lawyer now and I sell/fix/install software. Our 10 year anniversary is this coming January 1st.
You mean my grandmother had dates growing out of her face? Wow. Who knew?
I met my soon to be ex at Macy’s in SF where she was a salesgal I was “the mannequin guy.” I moved mannequins around for all the queer window dressers. Alot of the girls that worked there flirted with me…I got alot of pussy at that job. I eventually hooked up with the ex right before she moved to LA. I helped her move & there was something there, but it was just great sex. We hated each within a year but were married in a shotgun type affair. We had alot of laughs when she wasn’t a bitch though.
Now I think I’ll stick my head in the oven & jack off.
I’ve pretty much given up on women (as a mate.) I’m too set in my ways, assholish & too picky…all the ones I would want would be out of my league. That’s why God made porn.
It’s sorta embarrassing to admit….but my Husband and I have known each other since we were 5 years old. Our parents still live down the street from each other and we were each other’s first boyfriend/girlfriend in the 5th grade. We got seperated Freshman year when my parents sent me to a Catholic high school (which would explain my constant ‘tick’ and hatred for religion) while he went and met and then married a complete IDIOT that he now has a son with. We reconnected at 26 and have been together ever since.
Completely agree with you Jeff……sense of humor is my #1. If you don’t find the humor in the things that I do…………..NEXT!!!
We met at a Fringe Festival and I saw him play in a band a couple of times. I went to a party at his place, people were jamming around the table. I sat next to him and sang harmony until he noticed me. It’ll be 20 years this month and we are getting married next summer. The most common reaction to that news is “Why?”.
We have a lot of fun together, still create music together and I can always make him laugh.
The Evil Twin and I met through a mutual friend. We had actually known “about” each other for years prior, but he was in New Mexico in the AF and I was in WV at Marshall (he’s also 9 years older than I am, so chance meeting would have been a long shot). We’ve been together for 16 years now – married for 15 in October. And he still makes me laugh like no one else.
Ok, I’m totally stressing cuz I only discovered this site a few months ago so I started reading from the very beginning but now I can’t get onto the old site cuz the link isn’t working…I’m stuck in Feb of 2004…help!!
Something lakrfool said reminded me of this. Not sure why.
There was this crazy old man down the road from us in Texas who liked to hunt. He stocked his own land with white chickens, the kind that kids raise for fairs and such. And then he’d sit in the middle of his field on a folding chair and shoot the chickens.
He’d bring over some of his kills now and then and my Mom would fry them up. One day my Dad came in and told her not to accept any more of his chickens. When she asked him why not he said, “He shoots them with a shotgun.” So? “Then he walks over to the dead chicken and jacks off over it.”
Met my girl 21 years ago at a company we worked at that doesn’t exist any more.
I was born on a Friday the 13’th.
I was stung by a wasp on Labour day, just before my first propane dank petered out in the middle of cooking a big chicken.
Plus, I drive an Element.
I think they look okay in black, plus it’s got great headroom, even for 6′ 5″ guys like me.
Luv U Tiff, ur the only gurl 4 me
@ jeff_in_niagara – You were going good until you mentioned driving and Element. Nothin says high-obnoxiousness like a dorm on wheels. And mister, that’s not a good situation…
Met my wife through a personal ad in the local newspaper. We talked on the phone for a while before meeting and really got the opportunity to know and appreciate each other for things beyond the physical. Although she looked nice too, thankfully. Been together twelve years, although it looks like it may be coming to an end before the year does. Then it will be back to the newspaper I guess. Internet? What’s that?
Last night while watching the news, they interviewed Stephen Hawking about the new super collider that was about to be launched in Europe.
As he was “talking”, she started laughing and said “I always crack up when I hear him talk.”
I fell in love with her all over again.
Shiny Rod – you wish. 😉 Dude, I’m so bad at internet shorthand I prefer to type out all my cyber-nonsense, even if I am a horrific typestress.
But don’t ‘gurl’ git spelt without the ‘u’? that would free one up for some other ‘u r’ construct.
Thanks Tiff (all hopes dashed on the rocks)! My typing gets a bit yukie about this time of day.
Where is our bloated scribe?
I met mine at work– 21 years ago. We were “just friends” until about four years ago… I guess we’re late bloomers, but there’s nothing else quite like falllig in love with a someone who is already your friend. At as a bit of lagniappe, we are now too old to make more babies. Hooray!
Happily married for 10 years, married 7 months after first date, met him in a bar by scratching his head. (He likes the fact that I was daring enough to do that without even looking at him first! lol)
He says I tell this story better than he does, I STRONGLY disagree so may be you will get lucky and I can get him on here to tell it proper!
No problem Joe T.
Now get over here and fix my Windows Vista!
jeff_in_niagara…how do you like your Element? My wife is spending the year down at Chautauqua, and it was on her short list of cars she wanted. We opted for a Toyota Matrix…but the Element seems like a pretty cool ride.
First ex was met in college….second, work technically, but we never worked together or even in the same building (until now – isn’t that special?). I’ve sworn off engineers for good this time…yeah, they were both automotive engineers, problem of living, going to school in and working in Detroit.