Oops, no.

The Lad and I met in 1993. Because that is the year I started high school.

1993-94 Freshman

1994-95 Sophomore

1995-96 Junior

1996-97 Senior

Considering that fully half of my readership is comprised of members of my high school class, I wonder that none of you caught that. Oh well, my fault. See previous entry re: sucks at math.

It’s kind of irrelevant anyway, since right after posting my Lad Anniversary gooeyness, I remembered that we actually met long before that.

I was in 5th grade, which was what year? Let’s do the math…1990-91. This was back in the good old days when Chorus was still part of the standard curriculum, so once a week we all goose-stepped over to Mrs. Brown’s classroom to sing songs from The Sound of Music. Mrs. Brown was the Reverend Mother in a stage production of same, and it sort of affected her ideas of good music. So every week we sang our nunnish little hearts out, and every so often she would grab me out of line on the way out – she was a big lady and I was Meeky McMeekerton – and say “When are you going to come audition for my singing group?”

So finally I bowed to faculty-induced pressure and auditioned. The group was called Brand New Sound and I was admitted solely because my audition song was “My Favorite Things.” (Seeing Bjork sing it on death row many years later was so disturbing. Though I guess it was disturbing either way, that scene.) I didn’t stay in long because I was shy and didn’t know anyone, but I did stay long enough to learn the main song, as follows:

Gonna rise up singing

It’s a brand new day

I see the sun is a-shinin and the rain isn’t fallin

Like it was just yesterday

And I feel like livin

Got a reason to say (-ay-ay)

Gonna rise up singin, throw my troubles away

Cause it’s a brand new day.

I still get tears in my eyes, I swear.

Anyway, this story is too long, the point is, the Lad sat behind me at one of the rehearsals, because he was in the group on actual singing-based merits, and made fun of me. And that, THAT, is how we met. So really this is our 11 year anniversary this year. Kind of. Sort of. Not at all.