How we met...

It was a Thursday, January 6, 2000, and I had just arrived in Chicago from La Crosse, Wisconsin. I was connecting to a flight heading to Northwest Arkansas on American Airlines. I remember what I was wearing--charcoal gray turtleneck, over-alls (they used to be in style), and black buckle shoes. My hair was shoulder length then. I had a job interview at a hospital in Springfield, Missouri, but had decided to see my parents and then rent a car and drive up from Fayetteville. The passengers boarded, and I had a window seat. There was a guy sitting in the aisle seat on my row. He got up and let me in. It turned out that he was flying to Fayetteville, too. He was supposed to have been on the flight the day before, but his connecting flight out of Chicago had been canceled. The passengers had been rescheduled to the following morning. Having grown up in Fayetteville, I was curious what brought him there. He was giving a lecture at the University of Arkansas and then heading down to Stuttgart to go duck hunting with a couple of professors. We had a good chat and at the end of the flight I wished him good luck with the lecture and better luck with the hunting. He wished me good luck with my job interview.

I've heard that timing is everything. We were both going through some major changes in our personal lives and could definitely relate to each other. But, I had come to a point in my life where I was not looking for someone at all.

At the end of the weekend, I returned to the airport to find out that I had looked at my itinerary wrong and missed my flight. No problem, I could go on the 2 o'clock or the 5 o'clock. I chose the latter because I didn't want a three hour lay over in the O'Hare airport. Turns out that the same nice guy I sat by on Thursday was on that flight, too. We chose to sit by each other and had the best conversation. We did exchange email (the computer stuff was new to me) because he knew someone that lived in the middle east where I wanted to do contract work for a year. Anyway, I never went to the middle east. I took the job in Missouri and we started dating long distance. I eventually moved up to Central Pennsylvania.

Now, I occasionally wonder what my live would have ended up to be had Pete flown into Fayetteville the previous day like scheduled. Or what if I had sat by someone else and never spoken to him? Did you ever see "Sliding Doors" with Gwenyth Paltrow? It is a moving that follows two parallel lives of her character and show you how circumstances can change our lives from one path to another. It is an awesome movie. But, I kind of feel like that is what happened in a big way in my life back then.