Punch Drunk Love

She sat at the bar with another single friend, glancing around the dingy place with annoyance. She was almost twenty-six years old and so over the bar scene, but Suzanne had begged her and so she went. Two men approached them, one flirted with Suzanne and the wing man entertained her friend. But he was drunk. He was too drunk to be focused, interested, attentive. He asked her out for lunch the next day and she said yes, even though she assumed he was just another jerk from a bar. She’d met them all before.

She sat at a table by herself the next day, waiting patiently for him to arrive for lunch. He walked into the restaurant, looked around. Looked around again. Looked right at her, and then scanned the room once more. She glared daggers at him and in her iciest tone asked, “Looking for someone?” He’d been too intoxicated at the bar to remember what she looked like.

Lunch progressed and against all odds, they got along. He was the opposite of the typical guy she dated; he was all straight and narrow, neckties with perfect knots, a well-spoken History major who arrived in a VW Beetle instead of on a motorcycle. He told her he had tickets to the ballet, even though he didn’t, and asked if she’d like to go. She hated the ballet but agreed to go anyway. There was something about him that she liked.

A year and three months later they were married, and thirty-one years later they are my parents; all because of a drunken encounter at a bar.