My first date with Michele was also my first date with Scott Phillips, which should have been awkward for all of us. In their defense, this problem was entirely of my making. I had gone to church that morning intending to ask Scott to come see musician Ellis Paul with me at the Mucky Duck, the following weekend, and followed through on that plan. It’s just that Michele had approached to talk with me after Mass that morning, and she was just so much prettier than he was, so I kind of just blurted out an invitation to them both. They both said “yes.” 

We’ll get back to the date in a minute (because I’m pretty sure you have questions), but I’d like to point out how insane “Michele had approached to talk with me” is. I suspect that phrase documents the single most extroverted thing she’s ever done, and that includes wearing knee-high, red Wonder Woman boots as a guest speaker at her old Christian school’s graduation ceremony. We’d met briefly two years earlier, but not made any meaningful connection. She remembered I was a teacher (whoops – I had just quit days earlier), and I calculated that she should be due to graduate med school soon (nope – she’d had to take a winding academic road). That those two conversational lead balloons didn’t derail us is a sign that something was meant to be. We’d both had a rocky, life changing couple of years aiming us towards each other, but those confessions would unroll over time as we grew comfortable as summer went on. 

I finagled it so Michele and I got dinner before the show, and met Scott at the pub for the music. At dinner, Michele talked about how, having no idea what to wear for a “folk music show” she’d asked for advice from the doctor she was training with. The only context he had was Grateful Dead shows, so she settled for black jeans and top. In retrospect, this charming story is the first indication that my wife would turn out to be a fanatical member of the “Over Thinkers and Preparers Association of America”. She excused herself to the bathroom for so long that I assumed she was either snorting coke or playing head-games with me, but it turns out she was just attempting to do all of her diabetes related math and medication on the down-low. That her “secret” didn’t make it through our first date is a symbol of how radically transparent and trusting we would end up being with each other. 

Scott was a slightly better known quantity. We’d shared the same friend circle for years, but not much one on one time. I suspected he’d be a willing companion, since his future wife was away for the summer, and we could nerd out talking about computers and music while we figured out what else we had in common. Despite the occasional teasing that he chaperoned our first date, I don’t think I’ve ever outright asked him about that evening. It’s one more piece of evidence that Scott is one of the world’s best people. I sometimes think of that night as being like the scene from Disney’s Lady and the Tramp: Michele and I fall in love while a marvelous singer croons about how lovely the night is. That would make Scott the spaghetti. 

Happy Birthday Michele.