29 and Counting

This day marks the 29th anniversary of Mr. H's and my first date. I will remember it forever. It was a perfect evening (aside from the fact that I got my hand stuck on a barbed-wire fence) and the beginning of the rest of my life.

I actually had other plans for December 1, 1979, but ended up going out to dinner with him and my roommate, Stacy. We went to the House of Kong on Hwy 12 in Starkville. I don't believe it's there any more. And it really was a house converted into a Chinese restaurant.

After dinner we decided to explore parts of the campus that we'd never seen before. My freshman year, I lived in McKee. I was always seeing guys carrying surveying equipment disappear behind that dorm. I wanted to know what was back there, so the 3 of us headed back that way...in the dark. We encountered the above mentioned barbed-wire fence before too long. Stacy, being the practical soul that she was, figured there had to be an "official" way over. Mr. H and I decided to climb over. He held the wire down, threw one leg over, stepped over with the other leg, and he was on the other side. Failing to note the difference in the length of our legs and exactly where the barbs were, I tried the same maneuver. I ended up with my hand stuck to the fence.

Here's where the fairy tale begins: He got me unstuck from the fence and kissed my hand. I floated through the rest of the night. And to make the story seem almost too good to be true, that night I saw my first shooting star! (Yes, I know that the Geminid meteor shower happens every year in December. I know that now! Having grown up in Jackson, where the sky is orange all the time, I had never seen, or heard of, a recurring meteor shower.) There we were, on top of a hill, with stars falling around us. What could make this a more perfect evening!

I'll tell you:

A cow.

Remember, it's a dark, moonless night. I can vaguely see something blotting out stars on the horizon. We decide to investigate. We walk slowly, so we don't trip over anything in the dark.

We're getting closer....

and then....

we hear it:

"MOOOoooooo!"

The barbed-wire was for keeping the cows in! We almost fell over each other laughing and running away from that poor cow. Like I said before: it was a perfect evening. And it rather sums up our life since then: star-struck with each other and laughing.