» On 2/14/2025 09:45:00 PM Mountain Standard Time, Alan wrote:
Student # ±22 (a Valentine's Day story). 

When I arrived at Michigan State University in 1969, the size of the campus was intimidating. Two miles or more, from corner to corner. Forty thousand students. Classes scheduled from eight in the morning to ten at night.

While leafing through the MSU phonebook, I noticed there were a lot of Bairds. This was a new experience for me. I had always been the only Baird, in the six school systems I attended. When I looked closer, one of the female Bairds had a student number that was only 22 away from mine. In a universe of six-digit student numbers, that was quite unusual.

So I called her up. I was real smooth: "You don't know me, but your student number is only 22 away from mine, and I think we should go for coffee." Apparently, K was as adventurous as I was, because she chuckled and accepted. We got along pretty well, and started a romance that lasted nearly four months. I couldn't afford to fly home to New England for Thanksgiving, so she invited me to drive with her to her family's home outside Chicago. I got along with her folks pretty well. Her dad loved to pun, and punning was one of my specialties. So we all chuckled. A lot.

When K and I arrived back at MSU, she said, "You know, if we got married, I wouldn't even have to change my name." We both chuckled, but that's when I suspected the end was coming soon.

K had a well-defined Relationship Roadmap implanted in her brain:
1) empinning - receiving the boyfriend's frat pin;
2) friendship ring - receiving a special ring from the boyfriend;
3) engagement - receiving a diamond ring from the boyfriend;
4) marriage - self-explanatory, involving a wedding ring.

While I was just floating heedlessly through my freshman year, happy as a clam, K was secretly hatching a plan for bending me to her will. Not long after we returned from Chicago, K sat me down for The Roadmap Talk. Since I hadn't pledged a fraternity, she graciously allowed me to skip over step #1, but she was intent on extracting my high-school graduation ring from my hot little grasp. It was too big, of course, so she spent several days winding yarn through it, to make it snug on her finger. She wore it proudly, and showed it to all her friends. After we broke up and she returned the ring, she saw it on my finger, and asked me how I removed the yarn. "Scissors," I replied. She smiled bitterly, and said, "Do you know how many hours I spent, winding that yarn onto your stupid ring?"

And that's when I knew, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that I had pulled the ripcord just in time. 😉

A few years went by, but I never forgot K. In fact, during one of my cross-country hitchhiking trips to California, I dreamed about her. At the time, I was nearly freezing to death in a blizzard, at an I-70 rest area outside Topeka. The next morning, I looked her up, and her family was now living less than two hundred miles north of the interstate, so I made a screeching right turn and spent several hours hitching up into Nebraska. When I got close, I wangled her work phone number from her mom, and rang her up. I said, "Your student number is only 22 away from mine, and I think we should go for coffee." She chuckled, then replied, "Well, I'd have to ask my bank manager for permission. He's my fiancé." AHA, I said to myself, there it is - payback for the yarn! So we both chuckled, and I made a screeching U-turn, back down to the I-70 in Kansas. 😉

PS: I proposed quickly to the next MSU woman I dated, but she put me off for 11 years. Then we were married in a hot-air balloon over Napa. A few months later, we got an amicable divorce. 😉

PPS: There was one further divorce, which wasn't quite as civilized. Luckily, nobody sustained any permanent injuries. 😉

PPPS: Anikó and I each have 3 weddings under our belts, and we celebrate our 25th anniversary in June. I've been told that true love is sorta like a fairy tale. Some folks find their happy ending in the first person they meet. Others have to fight dragons. And some need to kiss a lotta frogs. 😉

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