Five Years Ago Today

I love this show.

Today is the only anniversary I really keep track of. I can remember our wedding anniversary when I try, but considering how long we'd been together by the time we got married, the wedding was almost an afterthought. If you told me on Valentine's Day, 1992, that I would be here, in this place with this man, I would have said: Huh?

Around Christmas of 1991 I was in Mountain View with some friends of mine (Lee, Ali, and the guy I was seeing at the time) at Printer's Inc, before we went to see The Bobs a cappella group. I saw Darin there. I knew Darin from Apple, where he was El Honcho Grande on System 7.0. and I'd had to interview him a couple of times for Inside Macintosh. I didn't know him very well, but well enough to say hi at the bookstore. He returned my hello a little rudely, looking for all the world like he wanted to be somewhere else. He made a little small talk with me and then dashed away.

I thought: what a dork.

In early 1992 I was not having a good time with the guy I was seeing. I think I was having nesting urges, and he was not the right guy for me. Fun to hang out with, but that was about it.

On Feb. 15, I was at Coffee Society in the evening, writing. The guy I'd been dating was there too. On the other side of me was a guy who had the worst case of sinus drip. snnniiiiii. sniiiiiii. Over and over. snnniiiiii. sniiiiiii. The guy would not wipe his nose or blow it. I got up and moved across the room.

I saw Darin come in with two other guys, who I would soon learn were named Zarko and Jimi. I thought to myself, I won't waste time saying hello to him. I even walked by them as they were buying coffee, but I ignored him. I went back to my table, popped open my notebook, and started writing about how rude uppity engineers can be to lowly tech writers. That was where I felt the tension lay. Hahahaha. Oh, 20/20 hindsight, you joker.

A shadow fell over my page and I looked up. Then my hand stole across my page to hide it from Darin.

"Hi," he said.

We chatted for a bit. I mentioned our previous meeting and made a joke about how engineers don't like to talk to writers. He went crimson with embarrassment. We chatted a bit more. He said he had to go back to his friends.

"But, um, one more thing," he said. "Can I have your phone number?" He asked if I'd like to see a movie or something.

Darin, the Darin, was asking me out? I thought of him then as Darin Adler, famous engineer, and it actually took me quite a while to stop thinking of him that way. Imagine if the guy with the sinus drip hadn't annoyed me. I'd have still been sitting next to the guy I was seeing and I might not have given him my phone number.

I gave it to him. We went out a week later. Then again two weeks later. The weekend after that, we went to Mendocino, spent six hours driving up and six hours driving back and we never once got bored with each other. We went away for a couple of weekends to places like Santa Cruz and Half Moon Bay. I remember the day I fell in love with him, and I realize that it really is "falling in love".

Darin said that he'd like to try us spending a week together, at his house, to see how we did when we were around one another that much. Yes, you guessed it: we've been together ever since, except for a couple of his business trips, my two weeks in Ireland with my mother, and my going down to LA.

We officially moved in together May 1, although it was pretty much a done deal around April 15. My parents were in Europe then, and I remember getting nervous about their house when I heard about the King riots breaking out in LA. That's around when Johnny Carson retired too, and I was already living here.

You see why my anniversary hardly rates? I've felt married for him for a lot longer than that, practically since we got together.

What a weird idea for a movie, thought I.

Then today, as Darin flipped channels, we came across a movie playing on the Sundance channel: Crush, 1992. The description was: "Thrown together by a car crash, three women and a man are bound by lust and revenge in New Zealand."

What are the chances, I ask you.

This reminds me of a story Richard La Gravanese tells about the script he wrote before The Fisher King. It was the story of a pair of brothers, one of whom is an autistic idiot savant, who get to know one another. The story culminates in, of all places, Las Vegas.

Then the movie Rain Man came out and he simply had to dump the script. What are the chances, he asked himself. Not exactly Die Hard in a Casino, you know?