When Brian Met Jen
Category: Just Plain Silly...
Posted Friday, May 19, 2006 at 11:07 PM [GMT-6]

Update: I smoked her out. Jennifer took the hint and shared the real story of how she met her husband. It's a better story than the one I made up...because it's true! ;-)

We met working summer stock theatre in southern West Virginia.

It was the mid-90s, the most boring part of a decade which will stand out in history only for the way it ended, falling into another century (depending on how you measure such things). Jennifer had just moved to Wheeling, West Virginia for the summer, intent on proving Daddy wrong when he said a Vassar girl had no business working summer stock in the Appalachians. She hated it when Daddy tried to plan out her life for her, as if the eight figure trust fund that kicked in only when and if he said so had any impact on her life.

Anyway, as she pulled the Jag into the parking lot of the little community theater, ready to begin a three-month job (if that was the proper term for a $6.50/hour, 14 hour per day gig) as costuming manager for the three productions the troupe would perform before Labor Day, the first person she laid eyes on was a big galoot atop a ladder correcting the spelling of "Cmoning Soon" on the theater's marquee. There was something about the ease with which the young guy switched the "m" and the "o" that made Jen (as her sorority sisters liked to call her) sit up a little straighter in the Corinthian leather of the Recaro bucket seats Daddy had special ordered for her car.

She soon learned that his name was Brian, and that he was home for the summer, taking a break from playing for Benetton Treviso, a professional basketball club in Italy. Brian led the league in rebounds and fouls, his aggressive style of play a sharp contrast to his gentle nature off the court. The league had sent him back to the States for a cooling off period after a particularly heated encounter with both guards of Benetton's arch-rivals, an encounter that resulted in hospital stays for the two guards and the Italian equivalent of a restraining order for Brian. He quickly agreed that working as a stage hand and helping with set design was an acceptable alternative to a stint in the Venice city jail.

Jen was alternately thrilled and scared by Brian's bad boy rep, and knew that Daddy would be livid when he found out that she was falling in love with the big guy. Who could have foreseen how life would turn out for the pair?

Note: This is what happens when a blogger brings up an important subject, then refuses to elaborate on it: other bloggers make stuff up to fill in the blanks. Are you ready to tell us the real story, Jennifer? ;-)