We were standing in the court house, dressed for a wedding. I offered to marry her right then and there, but Michele turned me down. It was an understandable ”no” on her part, and I think the lady on the other side of the bullet-proof glass agreed with her decision, too.
Early summer in the year of our wedding, my friend Bill Church got married in the New Hampshire mountains, and Michele and I flew up from Texas to attend. Driving the rental car up from the airport to the venue the night we arrived, I forgot how to drive on curvy New England roads and failed to yield properly, avoiding an accident only because the other driver avoided me. I was blissfully unaware until the woo-woo lights came on behind me. When the officer asked the usual “Do you know why I pulled you over?” I answered “I honestly have no idea.” To my horror, she then told me what I’d done, asked me if I had been drinking (nope), and asked for my license and registration (rental car). When she came back a minute later she increased my horror further with the words “Did you know your license is expired?” Noooooooo, I screamed with my brain. “No ma’am” I said quietly with my face-mouth. It had expired on my birthday. Five years from my birthdate (May) of the year I got my Texas license, not five years from the date (August) I got my license.
Driving without a license turned my traffic ticket into a misdemeanor crime, with mandatory appearance before a judge. I was told that failure to appear would lead to all sorts of horrible things, but really all I could hear was the pounding of my heartbeat by that point. I explained exactly how far away I would be, so the very nice officer set my date so I could go the Monday after the wedding before we flew back to Texas, leaving us with “you better let her drive the rest of the weekend.”
Despite the shaky start, the weekend was wonderful. Bill took the wedding party rock climbing, and the best man, Jon Aurnou, gave a speech that included flip-charts. I’ve never laughed so hard in my life. The wedding wasn’t far from where I’d done my winter wilderness medicine course, and I took Michele to buy her first pile jacket. Well, technically she took me, since I wasn’t allowed to drive.
Since the only decent clothes we’d brought with us were for the wedding, we were by far the most overdressed people in the courtroom the next day. I stuttered my apologies to the judge, and he ordered me to pay a fine, and send a copy of my renewed license to the court within 90 days. I stuttered my thanks, and we headed down the 4th floor hallway of the Pawnee City Hall. We had to pass the marriage license department on the way to the cashier, so I really did ask her if she wanted to get married. She thought about it for a few seconds, before turning me down, making me wait another ten long weeks.