A little over three years ago, I met a girl. Met is almost too strong a word. I was in my favourite restaurant in the entire world, and she was a waitress at our table. I instantly found her table banter interesting. She went beyond that which was required of waitresses. Even though my friends and I arrived and ordered just before the kitchen closed for the evening, she remained cheerful with an edge of knowing sarcasm. Not to mention the fact that she radiated beauty, even after a long shift of serving people. Once I had left, I asked one of my friends who was currently working at the restaurant for her number. No, I didn’t even do it myself. I was a coward. Coincidentally, I knew that the policy for waitresses at the restaurant was to refuse all direct attempts from customers to get your personal information. So, in my cowardice, I managed to obtain her number where I would not have been able to had I been a little braver.
To my dismay, the young lady had a boyfriend at the time. I can still recall my frustration and despair at seeing the words ‘my boyfriend’ appear in the sentence of a text message later that evening. Nevertheless, I felt like she was someone that would be a positive addition to my life, regardless of whether our interests were romantic or not. I consoled myself, and resolved that friendship would suffice. A shade more than a month later, we were dating. And we are still together as I write this, one day over three years later.
This is the first photograph of us together. It was taken at an orchestra concert that I performed at. It seems like this moment was both aeons ago and just the other day. That is the weird thing about time, particularly in the context of our relationship. Memories float in the pool of my unconscious mind, much like the Pensieve used by Albus Dumbledore in the Harry Potter universe. They float independently of each other. When I think of an individual moment or experience, I can vaguely place it on some sort of timeline relative to other experiences, but I am surprised how often I am wrong. This was demonstrated last night, when we looked through the photos of us on Facebook. Things that I thought were relatively recent were revealed to have occurred years ago, and some new experiences seemed to have occurred long before they actually did. It fascinates me how time is nothing more than a construct, and one that our mind does not adhere to. We simply look into the pool of our memories, laughing or weeping at whichever floats to the top, before waiting to see what will surface next.
In the case of our relationship, I could do naught but smile at the moments we recalled last night over scrumptious fried chicken and a pint of beer. I love you, Kristen Bishop. I hope that I have the honour of doing so for the rest of my life. Happy anniversary!