My Wife and I: A Fragrant Memory

My wife and I met while we were Computer Science students at MSU.

I don’t remember if MSU was Minnesota State University Moorhead by that time, or Moorhead State University. Either way, it was Moorhead State to me: the place where my dad worked, a block or so from my home.

My wife earned a Computer Science degree, I nearly learned calculus a few times. The first time we talked was in the hallway near the Computer Science department’s entrance: a square arch leading to another hallway.

Someone — students, I figure — had put a banner of continuous-feed paper over the arch. It bore a motto: “ALL HOPE ABANDON, YE WHO PROGRAM”. Having written a few programs in the two years I lasted there, I appreciated the sentiment.

We were both in a circle of friends we called ‘the computer gang’, who were also enthusiastic RPG players.¹ A bit overly-enthusiastic, and that’s another topic.

A Movie and Pizza, Coffee and Conversation

After seeing “Raiders of the Lost Ark”, we went to a pizza place — Godfather’s Pizza, I think, but don’t quote me on that — on Moorhead’s south side.

I remember that my wife-to-be was sitting by the window, facing north, and that I sat in the chair next to her.

What I don’t remember is practically climbing over an unspecified number of my friends to reach that chair. But that’s what I did, they told me, and I believe them. I really wanted to sit next to her. That, I do remember.

At any rate, pizza and conversation followed. Both eventually ebbed. By that time, I’d noticed that this young woman had not thoroughly enjoyed the movie.

Now, I’m not one of those perceptive, astute, and insightful guys; just simply brimming with sensitivity to the inner feelings of others. I can generally tell if the other person is about to go off the deep end, but that’s about it.

Anyway, I’d been rather tightly focused on this young woman for maybe an hour or more.

Again, I’m not all that sensitive to emotional cues. But noticing words, their context, and their plethora of meanings — connotative, denotative, and allusional? That, I am good at. Freakishly so.

This young woman was, I thought, if not in actual need of more time to get over that movie’s intense imagery, was at least in a position to benefit from opportunities to focus on something else.

Besides, I saw in the then-present circumstance an opportunity to enjoy a bit more of her company and conversation. Selfish? Oh, yes. Altruistic? Maybe that, too.

So I asked if she’d be okay with getting a cup of coffee at another place — a Village Inn, across the street back then.²

Reasonable Questions

I could describe the place, and the booth we sat in, but that part of Moorhead has changed over the decades. There’s a Snap Dragon Asian Buffet there now.³

What’s important, to me, is that we kept talking. A lot. About the movie, at first, but then she asked “how many children do you want?”

Many guys might have run, screaming, into the night at that point.

I don’t remember my exact words, but they were something very close to ‘four or five, I suppose, or whatever happens’. My tone was, assuming my memory’s accurate, calm and conversational.

My interior response was, if it had been expressed in words, something like ‘Schnortt! Dat’s my kinda woman!!’

We’ve discussed the questions she asked. She had a quite reasonable explanation for raising those issues.

She’d been very serious about another member of ‘the computer gang’, had gone through a Catholic pre-marriage course, and remembered the topics raised. To her, they were logical queries which seemed appropriate, given my apparent interest.

Which, of course, they were. My wife is eminently logical and practical. Me? I’m part-Irish.

More conversations, and movies, followed. Time passed.

And at last we reached one of those romantic milestones: our first kiss.

But first, I’d better explain something. I have no sense of smell.⁴ I can detect things like ammonia, but it’s not so much smelling the stuff as feeling it.

Okay, back to that romantic milestone.

It was a lovely summer night, on Moorhead’s north side.

We were walking under the stars, speaking of this and that.

When I asked my wife if it was okay to write about the experience, she agreed; and, looking back on that memorable moment, added — “you took me past the sewage plant”.

She married me, anyway.

More memories, recent and otherwise:

• “Sledding With My Dad: Good Memories”
  (June 22, 2024)
• “Radiation Therapy Done”
  (May 1, 2024)
• “Another Trip to the Emergency Room”
  (May 15, 2021)
• “A Family Visit is Still in Progress: Kids and Adoption”
  (February 1, 2021)
• “Miscarriage, Stillbirth, and Hope”
  (October 9, 2016)

¹ An old enthusiasm:

• Wikipedia
  • Dungeons & Dragons (No, it won’t turn you into a werewolf. Or were-gamer.)
  • Role-playing game

² Words, places, and a movie:

• Wikipedia
  • Allusion (“This article needs additional citations for verification….”) (Allusion’s meaning overlaps “connotation”, and that’s a can of worms I’ll leave for another time.)
  • Connotation (“…a commonly understood cultural or emotional association that any given word or phrase carries….”)
  • Denotation (A word’s “strictly literal meaning”.)
  • Godfather’s Pizza
  • Raiders of the Lost Ark
  • Village Inn
• Part of south Moorhead, Minnesota, showing current location of a Village Inn restaurant
  Google Maps

³ A place that’s changed:

• Part of south Moorhead, Minnesota, showing current location of a Village Inn restaurant
  Google Maps
• Snap Dragon Asian Buffet
  snapdragonasianbuffet.com

⁴ Some folks really don’t have a sense of smell:

“…In the United States, 3% of people aged over 40 are affected by anosmia.

“In 2012, smell was assessed in persons aged 40 years and older with rates of anosmia/severe hyposmia of 0.3% at age 40–49 rising to 14.1% at age 80+. Rates of hyposmia were much higher: 3.7% at age 40–49 and 25.9% at 80+….”
(Anosmia, Epidemiology, Wikipedia)

• Wikipedia
  • Anosmia
  • Hyposmia (“This article needs additional citations for verification….”)
• PubMed, National Institutes of Health
  • “Diagnosis of Anosmia and Hyposmia: A Systematic Review ” ; Abdul K Saltagi, Mohamad Z Saltagi, Amit K Nag, Arthur W Wu, Thomas S Higgins, Anna Knisely, Jonathan Y Ting, Elisa A Illing (2021)
  • “Anosmia: an evidence-based approach to diagnosis and management in primary care ” ; Peter G Deutsch, Catherine Evans, Nur Wahidah Wahid, Aakash D Amlani, Aman Khanna (2021)
  • “Anosmia/Hyposmia is a Good Predictor of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) Infection: A Meta-Analysis” ; Timotius Ivan Hariyanto, Niken Ageng Rizki, Andree Kurniawan (2020)
• Loss of smell
  Mayo Clinic