Thirty-five.

Almost two-thirds of my life ago (okay, that is entirely TOO depressing, let's start again):

I was a college freshman. Now, my dating life had been pretty lean. I didn't get asked out until the middle of senior year. I had two dates with a nice guy (and he gave me a very satisfactory "first kiss"), but all he wanted to talk about was cars, so we went our separate ways. I went to the prom with a friend, and I had a blind date senior summer with an airman when I visited my sister and her husband on the airbase. That was it. Four dates.

I was sure that college would be a Fresh Start. I was at a women's college with 1,800 students, across the street from a men's college with 7,000. The odds were on my side, right?

I went to mixers and parties and such, and, though I had fun times, Nobody Asked Me Out. I was really beginning to wonder what was wrong with me. My mother continued to tell me that I was beautiful, and she even predicted that I would be married by the time I was twenty.

The Wednesday after Thanksgiving break, a friend of mine asked me to dinner at the Men's Place (okay, it was Notre Dame). We had reciprocal dining privileges there. She was going out with a guy who had three roommates, and he wanted her to bring three friends. We arrived, and were introduced to the four guys, each one cuter than the one before. The last to be introduced was...Charming. My first thought was, "this is the handsomest guy I have ever seen." Then I argued (inside my head)--don't be ridiculous, it's just a guy. My second thought was, "I want to marry him!" (inside my head--what is the MATTER with you???)

Dinner did not hold promise. Charming was talking just as much with the other two girls who came with us as with me. After dinner, walking across campus, I trailed behind Charming and the other two girls (the sidewalks at ND hold three-across comfortably). Somewhere along the line, his other two roommates disappeared. We went back to his dorm room, where Charming played his guitar for us for awhile. My infatuation was growing by the minute: in the '70's, *everyone* wanted to date a guitar player.

Charming excused himself a little later, saying he had a date.

I went home a little later, chalking up the experience as another fun time, but expecting little else. Until about 11:30 when I got a call. From Charming. I had accidentally left my purse in his room. It took him a good long while to ask me out the next night, but after he did, It Was All Over.

It is really hard to grasp the fact that thirty-five years have passed. Inside, I am still that 18-year-old girl that fell hard for the "handsomest guy I had ever seen." And, he is still that handsome! I know better than to say that Love at First Sight is real, but those feelings are still there, along with the real Love that came later. And, by the way, we were married at twenty.

So, Happy Anniversary to my darling. Let's do another thirty-five, okay?