Thirty Five & Thirty Six & Counting…

It was a Saturday in March 1980 and I was working at a Youth Center in the maintenance department as well as helping out with retreats. I had gone into work to pick up a tool and stopped in the kitchen for a quick bite to eat and some conversation with the kitchen staff and a cute blond lass. 

She was staffing the retreat and had stopped by the kitchen to look for plunger or something to unclog a sink in the women’s bathroom that was plugged. 


She looked at me and asked me if I could help her with her task.


She was young and pretty and single and so was I; so I offered my assistance in her plumbing crisis.


When I got to the bathroom, the rest of the story was told; not only was the sink clogged, but the bathroom floor had two inches of standing water from the overflow.


I gave her some instruction and went down to my shop in the basement to get some tools and then ran back up to the third floor again to rescue this damsel in distress. 

When I arrived back to the bathroom, unbeknown to me, another crisis had arisen. Somewhere between the second and third floor she had lost one of her contacts! Her concern was that she had dropped it in the bathroom. 

I quickly unclogged the sink and accepted the new challenge of finding her contact in the two inches of standing water. I said to her that if I did find the contact, then she would owe me a date…Pretty clever, eh?


After looking for awhile with no success, I decided to go back to the second floor to get a flashlight hoping that it would help me to find the lost contact. I found one in the kitchen so I made my way back to the third floor bathroom. 


While walking upstairs, the sunlight caught something on the stair tread and bounced off a flash of light which caught my eye. I kneeled down on the step and way at the back of the step in the corner where the riser meets the tread was her contact! The sunlight had reflected off the contact enough for me to see it. 


I picked it up and ran back up to the third floor to give it to her and to collect my reward (a date with her) which we scheduled for the following night after she was done with the retreat. I invited her to a playhouse which was not only showing a play but also at which I had a “one-man” art show of a dozen or so of my paintings.


She ended up standing me up (as I tell the story) and never showed up for her knight in shining armor to pay off her debt. She tells a different version…

She said that because I was (am) a bit of a tease she didn’t think I was serious…and (as she tells it) she thought that I was still going out with someone else. I wasn’t; I had stopped dating the other woman she was thinking of a few weeks ago.

We ended up going out the following Friday and have been dating ever since. That was thirty six years ago this past March.

On June 6, 1981 we were married to seal the deal. This year we celebrate thirty five years of being married.

Happy 35th Anniversary Katie My Datie!