How My Fiance Met His Better Half

Ah, the ol' "how we met" story. I get asked this story a lot, along with the proposal story. Frankly, I'm sick of telling both of them. Every time I tell either of the epic sagas, my narration gets shorter and shorter. I kid you not, my answer to "how did he propose?!" has now become "he took me to watch the sunrise by the lake and then asked me to marry him." The poor guy planned an elaborate proposal complete with soundtrack and mini muffins, and I reduce the event to a single sentence?? How rude!

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Now if someone asks how he proposed I can just say "clearly you don't read my blogs--check it out." So now I'm writing a "how we met" post so I can nip that question in the bud as well. Because I would so much rather communicate through blogging than have actual human interaction, apparently. So here goes:

The first time I laid eyes on Mr. Unicycle was June 23, 2006. It's strange that I remember the date, but it's because it was the date of my university's pre-orientation, and also because our wedding is on June 23, 2012. I love it.

Image via Marquette University

The orientation involved a lot of this.

We were in the same informational group with our parents, and the group leader made us go around the room and say something interesting about ourselves. Am I the only one who has a negative Pavlovian reaction to the phrase "go around the room"? It makes me nervous just typing it. And am I also the only one who never has anything interesting to say about themselves? Why do people make us do this??

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I foam at the mouth at the mere though of speaking in front of a room.

Mr. Unicycle's interesting fact was that he's an Eagle Scout (hot). When it was my turn I copied him and said I'm a Gold Award recipient. For those of you who don't know, the Gold Award is allegedly the Girl Scout equivalent of becoming an Eagle Scout. Except I've heard it's way easier and less prestigious. Anyway, I sounded like a total tool telling a room full of people that I'm a "Gold Award Recipient." Doesn't that just sound like a tool-y thing to say? To top it off, I'm pretty sure I winked, nodded, and/or thumbsed up in Mr. Unicycle's direction (à la Fonzi) after I said it.

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"Eyyyyyyyyyy!"

The two of us didn't actually meet that day. We met exactly 2 months later, on the first day of real orientation. We were once again in the same discussion group, where we bonded because we were both physics majors and we both lived in the same dorm. But at this point, we weren't hardcore crushin' on each other yet. I thought of him as the nerdy Eagle Scout who liked Sci-Fi, and I'm guessing he thought of me as the girl who looked like she belonged in 7th grade, even besides the fact that she wore pigtail braids to college orientation (yeah, I did that).

Stay tuned for Episode II: We meet in Physics Class!