On July 16th, my parents had their 55th wedding anniversary. Pretty amazing if you ask me. You hardly see that these days.

I'd heard bits and pieces about how they met, but decided to ask my Mom and Dad for the full version.

My Dad and Mom went to the same High School and were in the same English class in their Junior year. They knew each other by name, but ran around in different crowds.

Four years later, my Dad was in an automobile accident. His friend hit a parked car, and Dad was asleep in the passenger seat and his head went through the windshield. He lost his front upper teeth and split his upper lip open. He ended up on a floor (ward) in the hospital where Mom was working as a Graduate Nurse (she is an RN). She was the medicine nurse, so she applied medicine to his injured lip and gave him ice packs.

About three months later, she went to work for Dad's family doctor. Dad came in because his upper lip was hard and about twice the normal size. The doctor decided to open up the incision and remove some of the scar tissue, and discovered that the Emergency Room doctor had sewed up part of his tooth in the lip. A lip is a particularly sensitive area, and seeing Dad in pain, Mom held his hand. He asked Mom out on a date at that time, but she refused.

Dad continued to ask her out every time he came into the doctor's office and she kept refusing. After nine months, he invited Mom to attend a Marine Dance. She mentioned this to my Aunt who told her, "For goodness sake why don't you go? You're just going to a dance, you don't have to marry him." So Mom accepted. They had a really good time together, so she continued to accept dates from him.

One night, after a show, they were window shoping on Main Street (money was tight in their generation). As they were strolling along, a wedding party came honking down the street. It turned out to be a classmate of theirs from high school. Dad said "poor sucker".

After dating for three weeks, Dad proposed and Mom said "you don't want to be a sucker, do you?" He was so angry with her that he ran out the front door, and she thought, "well that is the last I'll see of him."

It turned out, Mom was wrong. Dad called the next night and asked her for another date. He proposed again after they had been dating for five weeks and she accepted.

And that, Internet, is how they met and then married.

Comments

Posted by: Gopher at August 6, 2005 05:05 PM

Posted by: Heather at August 6, 2005 10:46 PM

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Posted by: Catfish at August 7, 2005 11:20 AM