How did you meet your significant other?
That is an excellent question, and the honest truth is that we met the old-fashioned way—right in the middle of a busy school cafeteria.
Back then, we were both pushing our way through graduate school. He was a friend of a mutual friend (J) and would occasionally join our group for lunch. For that entire first semester, I didn’t even know his real name; he was simply known to me as my friend J’s “weird Aggie friend.” He was someone who swung by the table every now and then while we all tried to survive our heavy course loads.
That all changed after Christmas break.
I was hurriedly trying to make it from my class across campus to the cafeteria for lunch. My schedule that day was tight down to the minute: I had just enough time to sit down, grab a quick bite to eat, pick up a to-go box for dinner, and race off to work.
As I was walking across the quad, a tall guy wearing a trench coat nearly knocked me off my feet. Wanting to avoid any further near-misses with this whirlwind in outerwear, I decided to duck into a back entrance near the post office. The trench-coat dude headed in through the side door. Naturally, as luck would have it, the moment I stepped out of the post office, he ran straight into me again! At that point, I decided to hang back for a few minutes, giving him a head start to hopefully move along and clear the path.
When I finally reached the cafeteria doors, I was almost taken out for a third time by a heavy door that had been carelessly slammed open right into my face. Guess who opened it? None other than the guy in the trench coat.
After dodging his path three separate times, I finally made it inside, spotted my friend J at our usual table, and set my bag down to save my seat. I walked over to the serving line, picked up my food, navigated a couple more crowded cafeteria near-misses, and finally sat down to eat.
A moment later, a guy walked up to our table and asked if he could join us. J and I both agreed. It was only after he sat down—sans the dreaded trench coat—that I looked over and realized he was holding the very same coat that had been terrorizing my walk across campus.
It turned out the “weird Aggie friend,” the trench-coat guy, and the person who nearly leveled me at the cafeteria door were all the exact same person.
I finally learned his actual name. After that chaotic series of encounters, we started eating lunch together most days for about a month or so. One conversation led to another, lunch dates turned into an actual date, and as they say, the rest is history.
Looking back, it is funny how the most important people in our lives often enter with a splash of complete chaos. What started as an afternoon of dodging an overzealous guy in a trench coat turned into a lifetime partnership. We may not have had a picture-perfect, cinematic “meet cute,” but every time we walk into a crowded room today, I am still glad he is the one walking beside me—even if I still keep an eye out for flying doors!
