The "How You First Met" Meme

AbbaGav has tagged me with this meme, which originated with WestBankMama and was inspired by Treppenwitz.

There are a number of things I learned as a result of dating the girl I would marry, some of which I will happily share with you.

Rule #1: It's very important to have a good chevrusa: you never know, years later, how it may pay off.

I was teaching while living in Washington Heights in NY. One day I got a phone call from a friend--a former chevrusa from YU--who was now a Rabbi in a shul in Ohio. There was a girl in his shul that he wanted to set me up with. It sounded like an idea.

Rule #2: Learning Gemarah on the first date is a great ice breaker.

On our first phone date--the first of many by which we would help Bell Atlantic finance their merger with GTE--we learned together the sugya that I was teaching my students. As I remember it, things went rather well, although on subsequent phone dates we did crossword puzzles. One time while visiting friends, I tried to include her in a game of Trivial Pursuit--but that fell through and we just talked on the phone for hours.

Rule #3: No, they don't shoot horses--but that's no reason to ride them.

Finally came the time to meet. I flew out to Ohio in December during Chanukah. What stands out most in my mind is that we went horseback riding together.

The horses were so broken in that they knew exactly where the trail led and exactly where they wanted to go. They didn't care where we wanted to go, and effectively ignored anything we did to convince them otherwise: an effective warning of what married life should not be like.

Rule #4: Stay out of Harlem

When she flew to New York, it was her first time in the Big Apple. She arrived at night and I picked her up to bring her over to friends where she would be staying. She thought New York City looked beautiful at night, what with all the lights shining all around the city as the plane landed.

On the way back to Washington Heights I got lost--in Harlem--and New York City prompted lost a lot of its charm.

Oops.

Rule #5: Rabbis wearing clown noses lose a degree of believability

Months later I proposed to my wife on Purim while visiting again in Ohio--since her sense of direction was better than mine, it seemed safer to visit on her home turf. We then went to the Purim seudah, which was at her shul. I told the Rabbi--my former chevrusah--that we were engaged. He announced it: and everybody laughed. Since he was wearing a clown nose and Mickey Mouse ears, people just assumed he was kidding.

He had to announce it a second time in shul on Shabbos so that people would take him seriously.

My friend, the Chevrusah, was the Mesader Kiddushin. We go back to Ohio at least once a year to visit family--and to visit my friend, who kept his Chevrusah in mind.

I'm passing this meme on to Psycho Toddler

Technorati Tag: Memes.