Like The Charles', Only Without The Crimesolving (Or How me and Mrs., Mrs. Jones met Pt. 2)

The open mike space where my wife and I met 8 years ago today was, although large (it was also used as a gallery and, I believe, is one today), incredibly crowded. If you were me and wanted to meet this gah-juss Black Irish lady from Boston, you had to crawl awkwardly over the other chairs, and performers in them, in order to get to her, or follow her out to the front of the building. Which is what I did.

Once out there, we were in a group of people that included the afore-mentioned Joe Wilson, Andrew J. Lederer, and one of this striking comedianne's co-workers from Brea (a town, among many, in the OC as the kids called it for five minutes, 2 years ago). I began talking to my future Mrs. Charles about the odd coincidence of our birthdays being that same day and we discovered that not only were we born on that day, we were also born about 12 hours apart! If I were Robert Klein, this is where my creepy theremin music impression would begin. Thank God I'm not Robert Klein.

Andrew piped in with the fact that it seemed like we were destined to be together. I suavely countered with the fact that our shared birthdate would also make us both Leos, and therefore, unable to share the spotlight. This is something I read once in a Scholastic book about horoscopes when I was 8. And Scholastic would never lie.

After having completely obliterated Andrew's set-up for me, I invited Mary and Joe (and everyone else there, because I don't like to seem obvious or interested or passionate or sincere.... but I'll tell those stories another time) to my party at the theater I was assistant managing at the time. I had managed to get a print of "Pal Joey" from a fiend at Sony and would be showing it that night. She and Joe, who I thought might be her boyfriend (nope, he was married, just a friend, my mistake... I made several that week, hard though it might be to believe) said they would come.

This isn't the part where we kiss or end up going out. You see, I had also invited to the party, a woman I was kind of seeing and ended up not, but not on that night. And at the party I forgot Mary's name, but remembered Joe's, who, by that time, I thought was gay (again, mistake... happily married to his wife... another mistake was the girl I was kind of dating... again, another story for another time). The party still managed to be fun, we all sang along with Frank on "The Lady Is A Tramp"(one of my wife's favorite Sinatra songs... you see, how could I not fall for her... lovely, funny, great taste in music... what's not to love?), everyone said goodbye, happy birthday, etc. By the way, unless you want all of your presents to be liquor, never tell people what your favorite is. I had enough Scotch from that party to last me for the next two years.

I called Mary the next day, because I couldn't get her out of my head, and we went out the following week.

And kept going out.

And-gasp-moved in together.

And 3 years to the day, got married.

We've been married 5 years at 5:30-ishpm EST today. And we're both forty as well. I love you honey.

Please forgive me giving out our ages ;>