An Arranged Marriage

Once upon a time in a little town called Westwood, a boy and a girl met in math class. Neither one of them was good in math, but that's not part of this fairytale. If you want a fairytale about people who fall in love doing statistics, you've got the wrong fairytale. May I continue? Thank you. So... the boy and the girl met, and the fact that it was math class was neither here nor there. They met and they became acquaintances. They never talked to each other outside of 8th grade math because why would they? They didn't know each other. But someone up there must've known that one day on a hot August night in 1980, they'd marry. Who this someone was, I can't say for sure. But I suspect it was the Wedding Planner who dwells in a faraway realm of table settings and floral arrangements. But we're getting ahead of ourselves.

And then one day, the boy and the girl went to the same pool party at a fancy house down the street from where the boy lived. So he could walk there, which was nice. The girl arrived by car. Someone said, "Hey, gang, let's play Keep Away." Those may not have been the exact words, but it was a long time ago, a simpler time when splashing in a pool and throwing a ball around was big fun. The boy had the ball. The girl couldn't keep away. The chlorine set something off, a chemical reaction that never went away.

That summer, they dated. Then they didn't. For a few years there, it was plenty of didn't. But then, the summer before high school graduation, they dated and something magical, something pre-arranged by the Wedding Planner happened. The boy and the girl fell in love. Eventually, they parted. They were young and stupid. Then they got back together. Then parted. Then the girl said, "Enough already with the parting. What's the deal?" So they got back together and stayed together and lived happily ever after. Today they celebrate 38 years of marriage. They're thinking they might go see a movie, a love story, of course.