"It's Crazy How You Two Met.."

My significant other will often come home from work and talk about the work colleague that likes to repeat "It's crazy how you two met" when talking about our relationship, when all she really wants to do is turn the conversation back around to her relationship because she still can't believe how they met. I can. They met at work. Not particularly unbelievable. Happens a lot I would think. Our situation was though I have to admit a little bit crazy.

There was one day I was bored and looking online for a cheap lens for my camera. I didn't find any. So I was about to click the x of the browser when something inside told me it would be a laugh to look at the adverts in the personals. I don't always listen to the devil that likes to sit on my left shoulder and whisper nonsenical advice, but this time I did. And I did laugh. Some of those adverts are rather pathetic.

A relatively sane looking one was one titled, if I remember correctly (it was a while ago now - so you can excuse me if I got the details wrong on this), Latina Looking For A Guide. The advert itself was unremarkable (sorry) really except for the fact that within the advert the word English was placed in front of guide when the advert itself was posted in a Scottish City. For some reason I thought I would be funny by replying and rewriting the advert for her and suggesting that she might get a better response because after all we Scots can be kind of funny about being called English, knowing full well that I would probably come across as an ass.

She almost didn't reply back to my message, but then did so anyway. Then I almost didn't reply to her reply, but then proceeded to do so anyway. I probably did so when I realised that she had reposted her advert by taking my advice but with the addition of adding her own sassy spin to it. Somehow one email led to another, and another, and another. Not with any expectations whatsoever. Certainly not of that falling in love crap! That'd be crazy talk! I made fun of people who thought they could meet someone off the internet with those expectations. That sort of thing never works! Nutters. In fact even now we both make fun of the adverts on tv for match.com and the other dating site I currently can't remember the name of.

Instead I gave her ideas of things to do and must visit places, with websites to look at. After a couple of emails or so I seem to remember doing something crazy and offering to be her guide when she finally made the trip. And in the meantime, we talked. A lot. We talked, and talked and talked. BT and Comcast made a lot of money from our talking. Yeah we were kind of stupid and naive about it. We were slow about finding a way of making Skype work reliably. Had we done so sooner we might have saved not inconsiderable amounts of money. Dammit!

Anyway the end result was something that was totally unexpected. I fell hard. I was smitten. I was crazy about her. So crazy I moved to America. I never wanted to live in America, what the hell happened there? I had no real ambition of ever going to America. There were many places I wanted to travel to before I died. I had a whole list of them. Maybe some day a couple of US cities too but they were way down at the bottom of the list. Those cities were probably not even on the same list. They were probably on the list of well I've visited all the other places I really wanted to see, now its time to add to it list.

I had intended to go to Morocco later on in the year. Around September. It wasn't No. 1 on my list but it was pretty high up and best of all it was one of the cheap places. I could do cheap. And it was time I had a well deserved 2 week holiday. I had done the research and just about booked the ticket when we initially started talking. I was so close to booking that ticket I could smell the food of the markets in my nostrils, and picture the sights, the people and the clothes in my head. And then some how I ended up here in October instead. Probably would have been here sooner had we not talked so much on the phone.

Sometimes even now I wake up in the morning, roll over on my bed and see this beautiful woman lying next to me and wonder how I got here. Then I get up and see a nice house (not as nice as we both want but nice enough for now), and then go for a drive in a large car in a strange country and I find myself asking how Talking Heads stole my life for their song Once In A Lifetime when I hadn't even lived the moment yet. I feel done dammit! I shouldn't be getting some sort of commission for every time that song is played on the radio or lastfm.

Now what if that advert wasn't placed or if I hadn't listened to that mischevious devil on my shoulder...what would have happened then?

Probably we'd be none the wiser and doing what we do now, laughing at those silly people who think they can find love on the internet.

Listening to: Augie March - The Night Is A Blackbird....I like.