Love’s Long Odds
What miraculous event brought you and your spouse together? Where did fate steer you toward the love of your life when the chances of it going the other way were much greater? Love is a fragile creation when you consider everything that could have gone wrong.
During the spring of 1994, I was preparing to move from my beloved Dakota Territory and follow my family to the South. I requested information from nearly a dozen private colleges from East Texas to North Carolina. Each time one responded, the pamphlets, brochures, and propaganda spilt across my kitchen table like a glass of milk.
Most schools leaped off my list with just a glance. Some were strictly theological seminaries, some were historically black, and a couple printed, Are you made of money? as their letterhead.
One institutes’s materials finally caught my eye. It was a Christian liberal arts college in Memphis that boasted a deluxe workout center with a pool. I gave the inserted picture of the pool another scrutinizing look. There were girls lounging around the pool in modest one-piece bathing suits! Perfect!
As amazing as it may sound, I chose the establishment for my higher education because of a two inch by two inch picture of women in their brochure.
I completed my application and threw it in a bulging manila envelope. I was so confident that fate was directing me to the girls in the photo that I didn’t fill out another application. Not once did I consider rejection or that something unforeseen could happen to the paperwork.
Fate toyed with catastrophe. During my application’s trip through the Bismarck post office, it burst open. The loose contents littered the floor and conveyor belts of the post office’s busy sorting center.
One postal worker spotted the mess and ran his eyes over the forms spying my name he uttered, “Hey, I know his guy.”
My uncle had come across the application and took the time to assemble the paperwork again. He then resealed the envelope (or put it in a new one, how should I know) and sent the rescued submission on to Memphis. Without his fortuitous placement, I may never have darkened the same classroom thresholds Melissa did. History would have become irrevocably altered.
Postscript #1: Years later, I still have that brochure. When I look at it, I realize I still don’t have any idea who those girls are.
Postscript #2: Nineteen year olds have no judgment. When I tried to quantify a teenagers judgement, the readout on the calcualtor kept displaying Err.
Postscript #3: I swam at that pool many times during my three and a half years at that school. The only moderately attractive female I ever met was the lifeguard. We dated a couple of times.
Postscript #4: For the record, that’s one of three girls I dated in college. It’s number that has frat guy’s heads spinning. I’m not kidding; I would have had an easier time hunting dodos.
June 23rd, 2008 at 8:05 am
That is crazy that Bill found that! Wow! God works in mysterious ways.
June 24th, 2008 at 3:41 pm
mysterious or frustrating???? I never heard the end of that brochure!!! I still hear about that brochure and events following!!!!