How Aisai and I Met
8/18/1

Mmm, cranberry orange bagels are good. I�ve been writing some rather downer Stuffos lately, so I thought I�d start off mentioning food.

Food is never depressing. Maybe if you didn�t have food it would be. In fact, definitely it would. But this isn�t about bagels, it�s about how Aisai and I met.

Back in 1989 or so, I was still in my undecided phase in college. I was taking a photography course where we developed our own film and were encouraged to try darkroom effects on them. One of the girls in my class was Jet.

Jet and I started dating but it only lasted about two or three months. I had met a friend of hers, Aisai, at one point when we swung by the Science Building at UAH to see her. Steeler, a horse at the stable she worked at, had died that day. Aisai was sad, but very pretty.

A while later, Jet and Aisai engineered the breaking up of Jet and I. Jet actually told me that she had gotten back together with her boyfriend, which was odd, since I was her boyfriend. I suppose I was merely a diversion. She was referring to her violent, disrespectful, gun-toting boyfriend.

I met him once, later, when we kind of did a double date going to, of all things, the circus. I have never figured out what the attraction of circuses is. I�d rather go to a zoo and see the animals. In any case, bad boy felt the need to show me his gun, for no reason. Freak. It was actually a piece of crap also. If I was going to get a gun for as cheap as that one would sell for, I�d get a Makarov in perfect condition.

The spell check suggested macaroon instead of Makarov. I probably would get a macaroon first, really.

So, Aisai and Jet show up to my dorm room and Jet breaks up with me as we are all going to some of my friends house. I needed to pick something up or something.

Jet knew that I had symphony tickets. I was very poor in those days and I had gotten the tickets for free. Jet knew that if Aisai was there, I�d probably ask her to go. And I did. I took the bait. And what wonderful bait it has been for the last 11+ years.

The night of the symphony, I saw Aisai for the third time. She was very pretty and after the symphony, I took her home and we stood in her front yard and talked until 5 a.m.

I had to be at work, at Hardee�s, at 7 a.m. but I did sleep just a little when I got home. When I got to work, I told one of my coworkers, Marvin, that I had met the girl that I was going to marry.

In fact, that night we talked until 5 a.m., at around 3 a.m., I told Aisai that I would probably want to marry her later.

We had a very fun time dating, though I was poor as dirt. We really didn�t date so much as hang out together all the time. We planned on getting married when I got out of college and could earn some money.

In 1991, around May or so, Aisai and I decided that we didn�t want to wait any longer to get married, and we set a date in September. The tenth was on a Tuesday. We�d have it at 6:30 p.m. so that no one would be inconvenienced.

Aisai�s wedding ring and engagement ring set was much more expensive than I could really afford at the time. At one point, about a month before the wedding, she asked when she was actually going to be getting the engagement ring so she could show it to others. I told her that I wasn�t sure how I was even going to get it out before the wedding. I wouldn�t earn enough money and I wasn�t putting much money into food or gas really.

Aisai took over the payments on my apartment. I had moved out of the dorm after only living in it two years. I started eating at her parent�s house more. But all the money that paid for the ring was mine, from my job. I was able to get the ring out a week and a half before out wedding.

A few hours before the wedding, which was in Aisai�s back yard [which is much prettier than the term backyard implies], her father, then around 63 years old [Aisai was born when he was 43], tested the A-frame of the bench swing in the garden to see if it could hold people anymore. It came crashing down and two bolts hit him in the head. Teri, the nurse in the family, said he definitely needed stitches, but by the time it was convenient, he would probably not need them.

All during the wedding he had to dab blood off his head.

We were married on September 10, 1991.