do you remember when we met

Today we have yet another post commemorating a significant personal event, in this case the sixteenth anniversary of my first date with the woman who would eventually become my wife. Because our engagement lasted twelve years before we finally got around to legally formalizing our pairing, we tend to view December 7 as our "real" anniversary (not that we give October 30 short shrift -- any excuse to dine out is all right in Maura's book).

It's my fault, though, that the anniversary falls in the grim first week for December, and not a balmy day in late spring or early autumn. How I was to know that when a college classmate gave me her phone number and address on the last day of the spring semester, it meant she was interested in me? Or when she gave me (and only me) a present (a Bubblegum Crisis t-shirt from a con she attended) when I ran into her on the first day of fall classes? Or after she gave me a bunch of old punk and new wave buttons, records, and books...at which point I asked another girl in our collegiate circle out on a date?

"I wanted to punch you in the ribs so hard. I could hear the sound of them cracking in my head," Maura later told me, but the question is whether someone as osmium-dense as I was back then would have even registered the pain from such a blow. I was eventually saved by my own youthful obnoxiousness ("character flaw," my ascot) and things resumed their predestined course after a six-week interregnum.

Thus, on December 7, 1991, I found myself on sitting on a bench in Copley Plaza, reading King Solomon's Mines while hoping Maura would show up in time for the 7:00 PM showing of Beauty and the Beast. It was my first exposure to the chronic lateness that is my beloved's trademark as much as her strong sense of compassion and her ability to deliver a killer roundhouse kick are. But the old saying is true -- Good things come to those who wait.

Or in this case replace "good" with "the best thing that ever happened to me."

Club of Two, forever and always.

When working out the musical portion of today's post, my first thought was to go with the song that had been stuck in my head that fateful evening...

Blitz - Razors in the Night (from the b-side of the 1982 "Never Surrender" 7"; collected on Singles and Rarities: 1980-1983, 2001)

...which rivals anything by Bachrach and David in terms of romantic allure, but I was worried that it might give people the wrong impression. In the end, my wife and I each picked a song we felt best fit the occasion.

Maura went with Exene Cervenka's ode to love amongst the bohemian ruins...

X - Because I Do (from Under the Big Black Sun, 1982)

...while I opted to compound my retrological sins with this eighties cover of a 1959 Phil Phillips R&B hit by former members of a 70's rock supergroup (Led Zeppelin's Robert Plant and Jimmy Page, with ex-Yardbird Jeff Beck)...

The Honeydrippers - Sea of Love (from The Honeydrippers: Volume One, 1984)

...even if the wife is more partial to Plant's "In the Mood." Besides exceeding the recommended daily allowance of romantic dreaminess, the "Sea of Love" was also the first track on the inaugral mix CD I burned for my semi-trusty chariot, Super Lumina, and the song that played as I drove her off the dealer's lot and into the pages of history.