How did you meet your SO?

[Ogre]

I was brand new at grad school, and one of the girls from downstairs in our department was having a party. She came upstairs specifically to invite me and my roommate. I was single, and she was cute, so I leapt at the chance. I thought that she was surely dropping me a hint, or failing that, she wanted to go out with my roommate, and perhaps she had a cute friend.

As it turned out, when we arrived, we found out that she had a boyfriend. Strike out.

Oh well. Nothing to do but start drinking and try to have a good time.

I was three or four beers into the evening when a group of three women walked in. There was Cindy, Suzanne, and finally, Kat. I flirted with all of them (there’s an inexplicable (and unremembered) picture of me holding Cindy in my arms, Kat has it on her refrigerator) but I ended up sitting down to talk with Kat. We talked for HOURS. Long after the party was a memory and people were passing out from excess, we were talking. I was enchanted. We talked about literature and music, poetry and movies. We were both from the same town, laughed at the same stupid jokes, and we both read avidly. She said I was the only guy she’d ever met who could talk to her about Faulkner, Bierce, and Flannery O’Connor.

I got her phone number well after the sun rose the next morning. I was still horribly nervous when I called her the next day. She said “yes.”

That was the first time. We had a whirlwind relationship for about six months, then had a terribly difficult breakup. I moved to Washington and she moved to Wales.

Years later, she called me on the pretext of catching up, and we began tentatively seeing each other again.

It’s been nearly two years now.

[Hooteewho]

You guys are sappy! I love it…I will be available soon, and wonder if there is indeed someon out there…

[CalMeacham]

Pepper Mill and I met at a Sciece Fiction Convention. In fact, it was the 50th anniversary of the first WorldCon here n Boston.

I was walking down Boylston Steet and I saw group of people that had that unmistakeable ar of “fanishness” about them. Somehow I knew that they were scence fiction fans, althugh I couldn’t tell you how. I asked them what was going on, and they told me that the 50th anniversary WorldCon was due to start the next day at the Hynes Convention Center. I hadn’t been to a Con in a long time, and never to as big serious Con, so I went over and bought a membership.

"How many days? they asked. The Con would run four days, over Labor Day Weekend. I could’ve ust signed up for one o two, but I as now gainfully employed, so I signed up for the whole Con. I was glad I did. Asimov was there. Forey Ackerman, wearing the same suit he did for the first WorldCon, fifty years earlier. Both Haldemans and Jack Chalker and Hal Clement and Orson Scott Card. Lots of others.

And on the first night I ran into Pepper and her sister. Their badges said they were rom New Jersey, so I said I was, too. My badge said “Massachusetts”, though, and I had to explain that I was originally from there. I asked them to watch my backpack while I went up to get pieces of the 50th anniversary cake for all of us.

After that I ran into them over and over during he course of the Four Day Con. This was odd – there were people I knew who I never saw a the Con, or only aw once, but I kept running into Pepper and her sister and their friends. We ended up communicating by using the doorknob of their hotel room as a maildrop. The last time we said Goodbye, Pepper eaned over and kised me. “So you’d remember me,” she later said. She didn’t think she’d ever see me again. But a month later I drove down to NJ for a date, and a month later I went to her October Beach Party. And I was hooked.

It turns out that we grew up 4 miles from each other, and were born ten days apart (same year). When I was in high school, I rode my bike past her house. Small world.

Later on, she told me what it was that attracted her to me. “It was your smile,” she said. Maybe that was my problem all those years – I don’t smile easily.