My wife was more than OK with it, but I\u2019m taking some heat from commenters on yesterday\u2019s post in which I depicted my future wife as a \u201chuman sewer\u201d who, when I first met her, had \u201clikely dipped her hair in an oil slick.\u201d Foodleking insisted that the blog must have been ghostwritten by someone with malicious intent, and RobotontheToilet said that he would have been \u201ca double dead man\u201d if he\u2019d told the same story. The Wiz, who had heard the story before, simply wanted to know when things turned positive and when I made the transition from \u201chey, this girl stinks\u201d to \u201chey, this girl is spousal material.\u201d<\/p>\n
First off, I want to point out that the story is not particularly flattering to me, either. The Hollywood Bowl incident rightly makes me seem like a major buffoon, and it\u2019s clear she had a much harder time overlooking my considerable flaws than I did in overlooking hers, which were easily remedied by some quality time with a little soap and water. It turned out that she cleans up pretty well, and I can\u2019t recall any follow-up incident where she would fit the description I provided yesterday.<\/p>\n
In fact, the initial follow-up to the story is pretty uneventful. We pretty much ignored each other for several months, not out of spite or resentment, but rather out of disinterest. We just weren\u2019t on each other\u2019s radar screens. She started dating another guy in the ward, and I owed my own social life to the fact that as they got older, Mormon women got more and more desperate.<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t until Christmas vacation that year that I really noticed her again. A number of USC types were up in Utah over the break, and we all spent a day on the slopes at the Alta resort, which is still the best place to ski around these parts. To say I\u2019m a better skier now than I was then isn\u2019t really saying much, considering just how inept I was at the time. The best instruction I had received on the subject of skiing came from the guy who played Booger in Revenge of the Nerds <\/span>when he showed up in the movie Better Off Dead.<\/span><\/p>\n John Cusack asks Booger the best way to navigate a particularly difficult run, and Booger gives him this sage advice:<\/p>\n \u201cGo down the hill really fast. If something gets in your way, turn.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n At some point in the day, a number of us found ourselves at the top of a very large bowl, and the future Mrs. Cornell made her way down first. I followed just a little later, and while I managed the \u201cgo down the hill really fast\u201d part, I was struggling mightily with the \u201cturn\u201d part. I was barreling down directly toward Mrs. Cornell at about 300 miles per hour, screaming, \u201cWatch out! Watch out! I can\u2019t stop! AAAAAAARGH!\u201d She leapt off to the side and I missed her by just a few feet and a few milliseconds.<\/p>\n Later, when we were all sitting back in the lodge, she had her hat off and her hair pulled back, wearing her powder blue jumpsuit, and I was struck by just how pretty she was, and I was surprised that I hadn\u2019t really noticed before. I couldn\u2019t very well make a move, though, as she was still dating this other dude, and I had just about killed her a few hours earlier.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t know exactly when she started to warm to me, but we had our first non-date date a while later, when she had to go to a friend\u2019s wedding reception and needed a date \u201cwho wouldn\u2019t think it was a date.\u201d Her roommate suggested me as a nonthreatening possibility, and she asked, I accepted, and off we went. And I don\u2019t know about her, but I had a great time. I asked her out for real within a day or so, and pretty soon we were smooching on a bench at the Santa Monica Pier. It\u2019s been smooth sailing ever since. Except when we broke up. And during our long-distance engagement, which sucked. I doubt that many of those stories are for public consumption, unless Mrs. Cornell wants to tell them herself. Which she might, if for no other reason than to make me uncomfortable.<\/p>\n Needless to say, I love her; I\u2019m incredibly fortunate that she agreed to marry me, and I can\u2019t imagine my life without her. On the plus side, she\u2019s pretty much perfect. On the minus side, she\u2019s short, and I can\u2019t kiss her standing up.<\/p>\n All in all, a pretty good deal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mywife was more than OK with it, but I\u2019m taking some heat from commenters on yesterday\u2019s post in which I depicted my future wife as a \u201chuman sewer\u201d who, when I first met her, had \u201clikely dipped her hair in an oil slick.\u201d Foodleking insisted that the blog must have been ghostwritten by someone with ... Read more<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-250","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=250"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}