On stage, I usually tell people that my wife and I met online. She usually responds with a grin, “You didn’t have to tell them that.”
But that’s how we met 17 years ago, only three years removed from the Internet taking over the world of communication. We were on the vanguard of Internet dating. We were both recently divorced, with kids, and, from later conversations, discovered we really had no intention of remarrying—anytime soon, at least. But with encouragement from friends who had already signed up, we both individually closed our eyes and typed up the required testimony for a christian online dating service.
Online dating is heady stuff. You get to the point where you check the updates every few minutes. One time my computer went down and I traveled to the local Internet provider just to get them to print out messages for me. That’s the kind of electrically-charged environment I met The Linda in. In this environment, you become brutally honest with yourself and equally as skeptical of what you read about others when they are talking about themselves.
Computer analysis was supposed to “pick” a compatible person for you to contact. In our case, the computer said we have about a 20-something percent chance of having anything in common. This algorithm was obviously off.
Our first correspondence, she tells me, was filled with romantic allusions that would start a fire on wet wood. I’m a writer and for the first time, I was expressing myself with my heart as well as my mind, although I had little idea the fires would burn this brightly for this long. After a month or so, we decided to meet. She wrote, “Would you like to call?” Legend has it I typed, “YESSSS!!!!”
Our first “conversation” lasted something like eight hours, well into the wee morning hours.
A week later, we decided to meet halfway between our homes. The reason being, her mother told her I might be an ax murderer, since we had just met over the Internet. (With my family connections to bootlegging and the mob—just kidding—that was probably a wise move.)
Our first date was on the banks of the Tennessee River in North Alabama. Linda brought her guitar and I brought my little girl and we played and sang all night long and we’ve been singing all night long ever since.
After the first meeting, I remember asking if I could kiss her.
Having passed the initial test, I traveled the 70 miles from Sand Mountain, Ala., to Decatur, Ala., in a coat and tie to fix Mexican with her. As we were cooking in the kitchen, a long line of her family began to arrive, and just “happened to be in the neighborhood.” We all ate together and shared a common bond from the beginning. Later, we went over to her parent’s house, where I sang some Hank Williams’ tunes, most notably “Lovesick Blues.” A few years later, when we were married, Linda told me that her father pulled her inside the house as I walked out the door to the car and told her, “Now, baby girl, you hold on to this one!” I always get a thrill when I hear Linda tell this story on stage and she giggles, “And I did!” I like to think Hank Williams played a role in our getting together. I’m certain God did.
Ours is a romance, the kind written in storybooks.
When we were courting, “The Linda” would fix a picnic basket of fried chicken, bring along a tome of Shakespeare and we’d have a date with the four kids.
Then, there was the time when I was traveling out of state and returned to find that she had driven 70 miles to clean my house. To this day, the smell of the Lysol concentrate she used to clean the house and the note that read, “Can I pamper you?” fills my head. I’m really out of my league, I realize, but the answer was and is, “Yes!”
We married, blended a family and embarked on an adventure that I describe as a marriage that’s been a “15-year honeymoon” and counting.
There are times we’ll go in separate rooms and engage in an online chat. The same excitement lingers over the Internet as it did back in the late 1990s and literally jumps out of the ethernet at the sight of each other.
Now with her cancer I am being given the opportunity to ask “Can I pamper you?” She grins and she says, Yes!
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