Why Fools Fall in Love

My wife was more than OK with it, but I’m taking some heat from commenters on yesterday’s post in which I depicted my future wife as a “human sewer” who, when I first met her, had “likely dipped her hair in an oil slick.” Foodleking insisted that the blog must have been ghostwritten by someone with malicious intent, and RobotontheToilet said that he would have been “a double dead man” if he’d 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 “hey, this girl stinks” to “hey, this girl is spousal material.”

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’s 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’t recall any follow-up incident where she would fit the description I provided yesterday.

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’t on each other’s 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.

It wasn’t 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’m a better skier now than I was then isn’t 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 when he showed up in the movie Better Off Dead.

John Cusack asks Booger the best way to navigate a particularly difficult run, and Booger gives him this sage advice:

“Go down the hill really fast. If something gets in your way, turn.”

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 “go down the hill really fast” part, I was struggling mightily with the “turn” part. I was barreling down directly toward Mrs. Cornell at about 300 miles per hour, screaming, “Watch out! Watch out! I can’t stop! AAAAAAARGH!” She leapt off to the side and I missed her by just a few feet and a few milliseconds.

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’t really noticed before. I couldn’t 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.

I don’t 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’s wedding reception and needed a date “who wouldn’t think it was a date.” Her roommate suggested me as a nonthreatening possibility, and she asked, I accepted, and off we went. And I don’t 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’s 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.

Needless to say, I love her; I’m incredibly fortunate that she agreed to marry me, and I can’t imagine my life without her. On the plus side, she’s pretty much perfect. On the minus side, she’s short, and I can’t kiss her standing up.

All in all, a pretty good deal.