The Unconventional Story of How I Met my Wife

A lot of people meet in bars. I don’t drink, so I’m not a lot of fun in bars. Even if I did drink, I wouldn’t be a lot of fun in bars. Since I’ve been performing for a long time, I had a strict policy of not being in bars unless I was being paid to be there. Not a bad job if you can get it. Oddly enough, I never attended college, but I’ve been to more of them than any ten people.

I just bumped into a lot of my female friends, so to speak. Things worked out and we were together, at least until such time as we weren’t together. As I’ve mentioned, I was severely lacking in Opposite Sex Skills<tm>. Not much has changed, except that I don’t have to suffer because of it anymore (some would say my wife suffers for it).

I did eight years in a doctor’s office as a medical biller and fledgling computer geek. The office was in a medical building with many offices. As a result, I was the lone male in the building, except for the doctors (talk about the odds being stacked….). I attempted to use this to my advantage.

With little in the way of Opposite Sex Skills and nothing in the way of looks, I needed to find something to make myself less repulsive to women. The next time somebody tells you that women find a sense of humor very important in a man, you can tell them to their face that they’re full of excrement. This little bit of untruth is right up there next to the one that says guitar players get all the girls. If that were true, there’s a very large backlog of women somewhere, all waiting for me. My wife has a great sense of humor (she married me, after all), but it does not extend to a very large backlog of women somewhere, all waiting for me to come along. I keep telling her it’s ok, I don’t want to marry any of them, but somehow this does nothing to comfort her.

Totally by mistake, I discovered something that proved nothing short of a Chick Magnet. And that something was chocolate. Because that’s my drug of choice, I always had a drawer full of chocolate, candy, cookies, and whatever else I felt necessary to get me through the long work day. Not being possessed of looks, I learned to make friends with the people in the building by making them laugh and by the sheer magnificence of chocolate.

I became known as the Candy Man. I’d visit other offices and the others would come visit me, all for the love of chocolate. It was sheer hell :)

My best friends in the building worked for an oncologist on another floor. We ate lunch together and were in and out of each other’s offices all day. One day the nurse, a really nice lady about my age, announced she was leaving. She had the nerve to tell me she had to go anyway after I told her she couldn’t leave.

I had an hour to think about this further when I decided the oncologist needed my help in the selection of a replacement nurse. I quickly put my requirements to paper and faxed it to his office (one floor away).

A few weeks later I got the call to come visit the oncology office to meet their new addition. It was starting to snow and I needed to order some lunch. The ladies in the office kept pushing the new nurse to call me because maybe she could order with me. I met her and we ordered lunch.

The building in which we worked was very poorly maintained. Among other things, the heat was so dry that as soon as it came on, you would shock yourself on everything you touched. When I walked in with lunch, the new nurse got a shock from static electricity as I handed her a sandwich.

Within days we became inseparable. Within a year we moved in together.

Because I had the Candy Drawer of Death, I received many visitors.  I would direct them to the drawer and let them take whatever they wanted.  As a result, I was fairly popular.  My new nurse friend would also come by.

I wasn’t the first person to realize I really liked the new nurse.; I had to find out from a coworker.  She looked at me and giggled, saying that she knew we were an item.  Since I hadn’t said anything and wasn’t fully aware of it myself, I asked her what she was talking about.  Her extremely keen observation was that when New Nurse came by for candy, I didn’t move out of the way.   I allowed her in my `personal space.’

This was the first time I had heard the term but it made sense.   Now I have an acknowledged personal space radius of thirty feet in all directions but I didn’t recognize it then.  I went home and thought about what my coworker told me and realize she was right - I liked New Nurse.

It’s a damn good thing I have people around to tell me how I feel.  Otherwise I might never know.

Here’s the fun part.  The oncologist was stunningly smart and clever to boot.   When I faxed my requirements for his new nurse, he thought it would be amusing to present the list to New Nurse after he hired her.

What were my requirements?

Short (my wife is 5′8″), dark-skinned Italian (pale-skinned German), petite (not petite), brunette with big hair (blonde straight hair) and not too top-heavy (several sizes larger than requested).

My wife told me about this years later.  When she got the fax, she was livid.  She wanted to know what kind of [expletive deleted] would send something like this.  This person must be an absolute ass and if she ever came across him, she was going to tell him to his face.  What nerve.

If I hadn’t zapped her with the electricity of love (the static electricity during lunch), I would have had a very difficult time getting past that fax.

It’s been fourteen years.  Whatever it was, I count myself lucky.   I still have a drawer full of chocolate at work, which I share with everybody in the vicinity.   But now it’s just chocolate - nothing else.