Greetings, my fellow port swillers!

Well, twenty-five years ago this evening, ol’ Robbo met Mrs. R.

You see, at the time I was in my second year of law school at Dubyanell.  That evening, I had gone over to a buddy’s apartment to borrow his VCR while he and his girlfriend – a student at Sweet Briar College, 45 minutes across the Blue Ridge – went out on a date.

When I got there, my friend was on the phone with his GF discussing logistics.  “Hey,” he said, “GF is hitching a ride over from Future Mrs. R (“FMR”). Want to meet her?”

Understand that I had been out on another blind date the night before (my birthday), set up by this same friend.  It had been an utter flop.  Not ugly, you understand, just completely without chemistry.  (Indeed, the young person involved, and her family, are now members of Robbo’s Former Episcopal Church and I speak with her from time to time.  I’m pretty sure she has no recollection that we went out on said date.  That’s how complete the lack of chemistry was.)

Anyhoo, I was pretty disgruntled re the whole dating/relationship thing that night.  I said, “Look, I’m going to watch my movie.  If she wants to join me, fine.  If she doesn’t, also fine.  Doesn’t matter.”

My friend conveyed this to his GF, who replied that FMR had no problem with that.

A short while later, there was a knock at my friend’s door.  GF walked in, followed by FMR.  Curiously, because I forget so many other things, I still remember the look on her face as she crossed the threshold.

Ironically, it was because I didn’t really care that I didn’t try to put on a face.  And because I didn’t try to put on a face, we hit it off immediately.

Go figure.

What keeps this from being a totes aaaawwww story? My choice of movies that evening.  Yes, long before I had any idea there might be any social interaction involved, I had settled on Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, one of the more unfortunate entries in the canon.  (In my defense, I had not seen it before, so did not know how rotten it was.)

Whelp, to her credit, Mrs. R stuck it out with a smile on her face.  And the rest, as they say, is history, although so far as I know, she has never since clapped eyes on anything Star Trek related.

In a perfect world, each signal year I would honor the anniversary of our meeting  by, say, a bottle of champaign and an airing of the same movie.  However, I’m sure fellow friends of the decanter will understand why we, um, don’t.

Related, here is the one (almost) redeeming scene in that whole wretched movie:

What does God need with a starship, or with a centralized bureaucracy, indeed?