In June, The Hubs and I will be celebrating our eleventh wedding anniversary.  September marks thirteen years since we started dating.  This, of course, begs the question how I’m old enough to have been with the same guy for thirteen years.  Impossible, because I remember my sweet sixteenth birthday party and it really doesn’t seem that long ago.  We ate pizza and played board games which shows, yeah, it was a really long time ago because I don’t think sixteen year olds do that anymore.  I got Beanie Babies as gifts, for crying out loud.

This, for your viewing pleasure, is me and The Hubs the day we met: August 25, 2001.  I was a slouching nineteen year old blonde and he was a twenty-two year old Army specialist.  That town you see behind us is, of course, Gettysburg.

We’d spent the whole afternoon together, wandering around the battlefield and holding hands and all that cute crap.  We talked about nicknames (I can’t actually remember why we were talking about nicknames) and he’d joked that his had always just been Curley.  I probably giggled but I remember being confused.  What a random nickname.  Curley.  His hair didn’t look curly.  He didn’t look like Curley from the 3 Stooges.  Weird.  But he was cute.  I was willing to dismiss weird for cute.

Right before we left with our respective families (yeah, everyone met that weekend), we exchanged addresses so we could…write letters to each other?  I have no idea.  Anyway, he wrote his dorm address and his full name on a piece of paper.  Nerdily, I still have this piece of paper.  And, at the top, it shows his last name was……..Curley.

Ohhhhhhhhh.

Despite what you might think, The Hubs isn’t Irish.  He’s Italian.  So, it was wasted effort when, about eight years ago and I worked in sales, this conversation happened:

Phone customer: Okay, so, what’s your last name?  Spell it for me?

Me: Heather Curley.  C-U-R-L-E-Y.

Phone customer: (brief, uncomfortable silence)  Fucking Irish.

<click>

Yeah, dumb.  I remember staring at the phone after he hung up on me, thinking, “But….I’m not Irish.”

I am, though, naïve.  Shortly after The Hubs and I started dating, he and I were slumming around Gettysburg.  It was just starting to get dark so, he suggested, “Why don’t we go back to my dorm room and watch Braveheart?  My roommate went home for the weekend.”

Well, sure!  I’d never seen Braveheart!  Naked Mel Gibson and freedom and….whatever.  “Yes.  I would love going back to your dorm room and watch Braveheart.”

So, off we went to his dorm room and he put the VHS tape in the VCR (stop laughing.  It was 2001 and we were in college).  Where do we sit in a dorm room?  Why, the bed of course.  We watched the beginning of the movie and…after like, twenty minutes, he showed his Italian-ness by his Roman hands.  Roaming.  Get it?  Hahahaha.  Yeah, well, that’s when I figured out that we weren’t really there to watch Braveheart.  We were there to play hide the cannoli.

Sigh.

Thirteen years later, I still haven’t seen Braveheart.  I have no idea what the plot of Braveheart has to do with, other than Scotsmen being Scottish and wearing kilts and, I’m assuming, fighting the British or something.  I think he dies at the end.  No clue.

I did fall for that pickup line one other time.  It was right after we bought our house and before the cable company came to hook up our cable.  The Hubs pulled out the dusty, old, Braveheart VHS tape and said, “Hey, why don’t we watch Braveheart through the rest of the way?  You never did see the end of it.”

Well, sure!  Not only had I not seen the end of it, but I also hadn’t seen the middle of the first VHS tape or the beginning of the second VHS tape!  “Yes.  I would love watch Braveheart.”

Twenty minutes later…….Oh.  We’re not actually here to watch Braveheart, are we.  Yeah.