Long, lost memory

The other day, I was making idle chit-chat with a new acquaintance when I mentioned that I'd once dated someone who dumped me for the religious life. Yes, illicit love with a monkey drove someone to take vows of chastity. Now, that's some powerful funk.

Anyway, I realized that for years now, I'd been characterizing that relationship by it's end, not it's beginning. The beginning was actually the stuff of Meg Ryan movies. It was a meet cute.

I was a university student. I was prone to drinking large amounts of coffee everyday and the corresponding hyperactivity. (Like a monkey really needs help.)

One evening, I was holed up in not my usual coffee shop . . . one across the street from my usual. This was the coffee shop within a bookstore and the really nerdy grad students tended to hang out there. I was set up on a table with my econometrics homework (I warned you, nerd to the core) when the waitress brought to me a bit of folded yellow tablet paper. On the paper, in neat but tiny handwriting was a poem. When I looked up, the waitress pointed to the author and said he'd like to join me for a cup of coffee.

I said yes . . . and what followed was six weeks of an intensely torrid romance . . .