How I Met Your Pa

As kindly suggested by rnbuffoon, the following is a full - indeed, possibly overly wordy - account of how I met the giant ball of sometimes-infuriating-yet-mostly-yummy fairy-floss that is my hubbster.

I first heard about Tim about six months before we actually met. My little sister Ang had just changed high schools, and had immediately connected with a gal called Catherine - by all accounts they bonded during a drama class exercise when they had to talk about somebody they missed and both chose to speak of their older sibling (i.e. me for Ang, Tim for Catherine) who had left home for the greener pastures of university. I recall a phone conversation with Ang sometime shortly after, with her telling me how Catherine had spilled her guts over how her bro used to be her best bud and how much she loved him and was gutted out that he was now living a plane ride away. Having only witnessed younger sister/older brother dynamics involving screaming and blowtorches, I was pretty surprised. Wow, I thought. He sounds like something else.

I never really gave it any more thought than that, until half a year later I found myself back in T'ba (that's affectionate/derogatory speak - depending on your mood - for Toowoomba, my hometown), having finished uni, for some much needed recovery time. Which mainly involved listening to way too much Ben Harper and Leonardo's Bride and writing pretentious poetry. Anyhoo, as it turned out, Tim too, had made the move back to Woomby-land (that's another Toowoomba term. If you ever get there, do be sure to use it. Just make sure you footnote me.)

Part of my down-time involved me evaluating my experiences thus far with the whole men thing. After some, let's see, let's just call them 'ridiculous' ventures, I'd decided that at the grand old age of 19, I was fed up with the whole thing. No more would I settle for less! And so, in equally 'ridiculous' fashion, I set forth and wrote a list of not three, not seven, but EVERY quality I wanted in a guy. From "likes poetry" to "appreciates folk music" to "waterskis", I believe the final tally of criteria came in at 103.

Anyhoo, I read them one night to my darling sis, who laughed at me, but then at the end said to me: "That's weird. Do you know who's almost every single one of those?"

Me: "Who?"

Ang: "Tim."

(Note: in fact he wasn't. He couldn't play guitar and had never waterskiied. But we soon remedied that.)

Catherine and Angie, meantime, had become best friends. Indeed, they were inseparable. And I, now having NO friends left in the Woombster (hehe, I made that one up), started to hang out at Cat's place a lot. It's weird, because though I must have gone there at least ten times in the space of a few weeks, not ONE of those times was Tim there. I met the entire remainder of the family - and it's not small - but Tim remained the missing piece of the puzzle, no doubt heightening his enigmatic status in my mind.

The day we did meet, he was sitting on a chair in the loungeroom watching the cricket with the fam. (It remains a favourite past-time in that house, something which I still don't quite understand...) Our meeting wasn't exactly momumental, I think we chatted for about four minutes before I got all nervous and excused myself. Nervous? you say. You? NO! But yes.

We started to hang out, sneaking cigarettes together out the front of his house (which was ridiculous, because we were both legally adults at this point, but somehow the whole 'having parents inside' thing made it seem kinda naughty) and talking about philosophy, life, the universe and everything.

The chats continued, the tension built...and two months later, I was a little over it. Was he NEVER going to make a move? Seriously? Cos if it really wasn't going to happen, I certainly didn't want to waste my time sitting around and waiting for it. (As anybody who knows me at all will verify, patience is not one of my strong points).

Then came the night of the 1998 Pearl Jam concert. Ang and Cat had convinced me to exchange my moshpit ticket with their seated one, with the chance to sit next to Tim as the juicy carrot. After relenting, I vowed to myself that if he didn't make a move tonight - remember, I had given up a MOSH TICKET for this - then that was it. I was moving up and on baby.

We met up before the concert and had a few drinks. Nice. We walked into the stadium and sat down and straight away held hands. Nicer. Then, during the support act, the lead singer called out to the audience "Anybody who's here with someone they like, love, or whatever, I just want you to turn to each other now and give each other a big kiss!" Nicest. I couldn't believe my luck! WOOHOO!

Tim turned to me and smiled. "Well, we can't just kiss because he told us to!"

Be still my sinking heart.

About five minutes later, he reached over and pashed me anyway.

And the rest...va va voom, two kids and an overseas jaunt later...is history.