Three years ago today, I met Curtis (he's very wonderful).
He came up to me in the student dining room and sat down and asked me if I remembered him. Apparently we'd known each other in high school. I had no recollection. He showed me pictures, himself as a young boy with a baby face and braces, holding a tiny bluegill up next to his face. I still didn't remember.
He sat down next to me and talked to me for an hour and a half. I spun a red delicious apple around on the table the whole time we talked, and he leaned forward and grinned and took a genuine interest in everything I had to say. He charmed me through and through. A week later, he picked me up from the airport in the middle of the night. He had a backpack full of different flavors of sparkling water and gatorade, and a big green poster board that said, "It's Me, Curtis." We rode back on the el together and he told me about his family, and his dog, and the forest green Buick century that used to be his grandpa's.
We nonchalantly agreed to study in the library together, although we didn't get much homework done. We went on a long walk through Lincoln Park, and climbed a tree, and got bread and cheese and chocolate milk and sat by the river. The next day I helped him (by which I mean he kindly let me think I was helping him) tear down sound equipment that he'd set up for work.
A month later, after a long cold walk late at night, we sat on a bench under the big mushroom at Rainforest Cafe, looking at the McDonalds across the street. He told me he liked me.
And the rest is history.