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A journal entry by another member on Electronic Relationships (dating by Internet) inspired me to write about how I met my second husband (now deceased) in 1984. The Internet hadn't been invented yet, but personal ads were in full swing. I was just coming out of a year of mourning my boyfriend (died of cancer at 51) of 2.5 years when I picked up a copy of Trellis, a singles paper (are they still around?) in the SF Bay Area.
I lived in San Jose. I was 49, working as a technical editor, with 2 grown children. I was looking for a long-term relationship (not necessarily marriage; been there, done that), but the man had to be at least 6 ft tall, because I was 5' 11' (I've since shrunk to 5' 10"), divorced from a shrimp, and determined not to look down (in more ways than one) on a man ever again.
One Saturday night, on a whim, I went through the Trellis ads from men looking for women. If they didn't mention height, I skipped them. I just started calling. I can't say that Bill was the first one I called, but he's the only one I remember.
His ad said he was 55, a salesman, height 6' 1", had two grown sons from a previous marriage, lived in Sunnyvale, and (this is the part I'll never forget) he was not interested in anyone who was "geographically impossible." That meant if the lady lived outside a 30-mile radius, forget it.
I called him and we had a nice chat. He invited me out to dinner the next night, but I was involved in some workshop that would take the whole next week, and I just didn't feel up to meeting someone new so fast. I said I'd call him the next Saturday when the workshop was over.
Well, by the next Saturday I'd forgotten him—or maybe I just changed my mind. Anyway, I didn't call. But, luckily, I had given him my number, so he called me. We had another nice chat. The next day was Father's Day, June 17. He asked me out to dinner. I agreed to meet him at his apartment. Technically, that could have been a serious mistake. But it wasn't.
I'd had a handful of dates over the preceding three months, all disasters. I remember thinking on the drive to Bill's apartment, "This could be the one."
He sure didn't look like the one. He was bald. I'm no beauty, but my late boyfriend had resembled Robert Preston (or Denis Quilley, for you UK readers), so I felt I could compete with the good-lookers.
My first thought was, "Well, at least I'll get a dinner out of it."
So we went to dinner at the Velvet Turtle in Sunnyvale. I hear it's gone now. We even had our picture taken. I look at that picture now, and I can see how uncertain of each other we both were, trying hard not to show it.
But I had a wonderful time. He was funny and fun, and I liked him a lot by evening's end.
Over the next few months, I found out that Bill was everything my ex-husband was not: tall, honest, completely trustworthy, tall, protective, faithful, tons of fun, tall, and maybe most important, when he gave you his word, he kept it. He became my best friend. The only lie he ever told me was in that Trellis ad; he was 60, not 55. But by the time I found that out, who cared? Did I mention that he was tall?
That was the start of nearly 21 wonderful years together. He died of a stroke at 81, in 2005. I still miss him every day.
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