11 Years with the Italian Bird

Tomorrow is Danielle's and my 11th year of world domination. On the evening of October 19, 1999, Stephen R. Tait, lifelong friend and then-roommate, saw Danielle Pasquali walking through the parking lot near the Art Building (where we were waiting in the breezeway for Harry Mason, another lifelong friend and then-roommate, to get out of a photography class) at CMU. Steve, who has a magnificently easier time interacting with humans than me, noticed Danielle and nudged me, saying, "hey, isn't that the girl from your class?" And I recognized her and, kind of nervously, noted that he was right. At this point it's important to note that I was already headlong into a crush on her and felt the typical tingle in my scalp and the fluttered heart rate when I saw that it was, indeed, 'the Italian Bird.' This was several weeks into the semester and I'd only spoken to her in little snippets here and there in the ceramics class we shared. I knew her full name because it was written on her plastic bag of clay and I actively memorized it right then and made the not-typical move of making smalltalk and assigning a quick nickname of 'Italian Bird' (which I had not invented but stolen from the recently popular, Austin Powers 2). I had also mustered the courage (again, not typical) to give her an overt compliment in our first day of class about her glasses. "I like your glasses," I said. Pretty smooth, I know. I would learn later that they were just reading glasses she got at a pharmacy for a couple of dollars and wore them cosmetically. But I really did like them. And she said, "Thank you!" with a bright sincerity that took me aback. They magnified her already alarmingly huge eyes. And while I'm at it I should mention that I was fascinated by her appearance in general. She wore enormous plaid pants almost every day, fitted ringer T's, ginormous rings on most fingers, a massive gray fake fur coat that a pimp would kill for, a fuzzy sling bag, and without question the widest smile I had ever seen on a human. Also she smelled like the intimidating people at the Blue Moon record store. I liked to look at her.

Anyways, back to October 19. Steve, like I said, way more socially adept then I was/am, suggested we invite her over to watch Reality Bites, which we'd borrowed from someone and had made some riveting plans to watch it that night over at 352 W. Pickard. And so it was Steve who called out and waved Danielle over and the both of us encouraged her to hang out with us that evening. Turns out it was Danielle's favorite movie at the time -and she was actually willing to come over and watch that movie with us, which 1) surprised me, and 2) terrified me, but in like a that just happened, dude!, kind of way. Oh, also more direct terror because I knew I would have to race into the house ahead of her to cover up her phone number on the kitchen counter, which I had written down after calling campus directory assistance near the beginning of the semester, knowing I would probably really never have the guts to call but I still liked seeing it penciled in there on the Formica.

In any case, that's how things kicked off with the Italian Bird and I. And here I am 11 years later terrified, this time in retrospect, about what might have happened if Stephen had not spotted and called the quick-paced girl from ceramics over.

So, October 19 is our anniversary because A) our wedding anniversary (February 9) falls on the same day as my birthday and Danielle doesn't much want the date that coincidentally ended up being the most convenient for a quickly, but masterfully, arranged wedding to trump an already neat date. But, more importantly, B) this is the first day that it turns out we decided we wanted to spend the next day together as well, and the next, and so on.

And that's pretty much that. I know how it happened, but I don't know how it happened. Now it's 11 years, and 3 entirely new human beings (really?), later and I still want Danielle to come over, I want to watch movies with her, I still sometimes get nervous around her and want to impress her, I'm still fascinated by her style and the way she thinks, and I want to keep getting into the sorts of scrapes and adventures that we never plan on but seem to manage alright today and the next day and the next day and so on.