When people ask us how we met, we take turns telling parts of the story, because it's so fun. There's a version of this that I'd post that is twice as long and perhaps I will someday, but this is the version that I used earlier this week when telling it to a hundred strangers at Oberon for another Moth Storyslam. Earlier in that evening, a woman told a story of an entirely epic, almost cinematic, first date, and I knew that she would win. I told Hyson that I never go into these events expecting to win, I'd just like to be entertained and know that I can hold my own against an array of great storytellers. With all that said, getting 2nd place was pretty nice.

I'll start this story 12 years ago, though it actually goes further back. I was in the South, on a road trip visiting friends, and on a humid summer evening, I had stopped in Alabama to visit my friend, Hyson. I stood there on the threshold to her townhouse and I rang the doorbell. I had to admit that I was nervous. I had not seen her in five years and there's always the part that wonders how someone's changed over time, and whether or not your memories of a person are closer to who they were than who you wanted them to be.

But there's another factor that I should share with you, and it was that Hyson and I dated briefly 8 years prior when we were both in university. I was 20, she was 19. It was, as you can imagine, terrible in that special way that relationships between young adults can be. For my part, I didn't know who I was or what I wanted. I just knew that I didn't want the person that I was being then. I was a wannabe writer who had lacked the confidence or, I believed, the talent to make a career of it; so I had chosen to study business instead. I was a sellout, a coward who didn't possess the conviction to go after what he had truly wanted.

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