How we met. Also, how you met. May 15, 2007

Last night, at spinning, the girl on the bike next to me was telling the girl on the bike next to her (and, really, the entire class, as she was not exactly using her inside voice), how she met her husband. It was an intriguing story, involving cutting her hand while making salad and getting stitched up by the cute attending doctor who, along with extra gauze pads, handed her his number. 
 
If the girl weren’t so damn color-coordinated (pink and brown, down to her socks and sneakers) and squeaky, the story may have even elicited an “aww” from yours truly. (Instead, I think I grunted and checked my watch and wondered why the teacher was five minutes late; the teacher was five minutes late because - as she announced to us, a group of perfect strangers - she broke up with her abusive fiancé and moved everything out of their shared apartment while he was at work. Ahh, spinning class.)  
 
 Moving on, I’ve always been interested in the birth of relationships. How two people can go from perfect strangers to perfect strangers who are interested in each other to perfect strangers who are dating each other to no longer perfect strangers. It fascinates me.  
 
I’ve written about how I met M before, in this post. Here it is for those of you too lazy to click on the link:
 
I was at Suite 16 for my friend’s boyfriend’s birthday. He makes six figures at age 24 and thus we were surrounded by other boys who make six figures at age 24 and apparently use most of those six figures to buy striped shirts that all look the same. And hair gel. Lots of hair gel.After a few hours of free drinks and unwanted attention (“You know, I can drive you uptown later. My car’s outside. It’s the white Beamer, I don’t know if you noticed it on the way in”), I eventually hailed a cab (“Isn’t the Upper East in, like, the opposite direction of Hoboken? Thanks but…uh…I’ll be fine”).
 
Somewhere in the early 30’s and 8th Avenue, my phone rang. It was a friend from high school who was drinking with some of his co-workers from Major NY Newspaper and wanted to know if I wanted to drop by.
 
The truth was, I didn’t. But I was also wearing a very cute outfit that I didn’t want to be wasted on Mr. Banking Beamer and the like who were only interested in what was underneath.
 
I instructed the cab to pull over once we got to 48th. The bar was Irish and small and over-crowded and full of people who had been drinking since they got out of work. I was in my element.
 
I noticed the Boy the minute I walked in. It would’ve been pretty hard not to, seeing as he’s dark and handsome and completely my type. But he was surrounded by people and I was busy pounding lemon drop shots because, you know, I’m all about the class.
 
About fifteen minutes later, the Boy approached me.
 
“I don’t believe we’ve met, but are you drinking beer out of a straw?”
 
I replied that it was cider.
 
We didn’t take our eyes off of each other for the next hour, until he, shit, really had to go, 5am flight down to spring training, let’s exchange numbers, will call in two weeks when I get back, it was really nice meeting you, Clink.
 
Will call, my ass. I was thoroughly convinced that I’d never see him again and subsequently pouted in my cider until the bartenders kicked us out and I ended up at a diner, discussing an ex-boyfriend.
 
Well, y’all know the rest of the story. He did call. And ever since I’ve been thinking about what would’ve happened if I had never told the cab driver to pull over (and also if I hadn’t been drinking cider out of a straw, but something tells me he would’ve approached me anyway).
 
Not exactly the most romantic how-we-met (it boils down to: at a bar; I will make something else up for when our spawn are old enough to ask), but it’s ours.
 
Your turn. How did you meet? And, if you’re not in a relationship, tell me how you met your last boyfriend or girlfriend. Or the one before that. Or really any one. Because while I do have a lot to do here at work, I am always in the market for procrastination tools. And I can’t think of a better way to procrastinate than to read how-we-met stories (hi, I’m cheesy! Really cheesy and sappy! Be glad you aren’t dating me!).