A-Z: Eugene

Who else could I use for the letter "E" but Eugene, my husband?

I met Eugene when we were college sophomores. I knew his roommate through chemistry class, and through him I met Eugene and several other college friends I still keep in touch with. I'd go to their dorm for late-night card games, and Eugene would walk me back home. We used to have three-hour phone conversations; good thing dorm-to-dorm calls were free. He got the nickname "eugenol" from a chemical found in cloves. One time, to get back at him for not responding to my puns, I hid cloves everywhere in his dorm room. He saved some of them and put them on my birthday cake.

Less than a week after that, after talking in the dorm hallway all night, Eugene asked me to go out with him. I gave him a definite "maybe."

It took another fourteen years, many of them long-distance, before Eugene proposed to me. (It was at Cloudgate, or "The Bean" in Chicago, after we'd seen Spamalot and had dinner at the Berghoff.) I made him wait for his answer, and it was a pretty definite one. ;)

We joke sometimes that no one else would have taken either of us, but that's OK. I think we suit each other just fine.