Act I: They Meet

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Okay, Okay. Everyone gather 'round. Oh, this is Paul, by the way. I'll be relating the "how we met" story today. So, how about I start off in my own words? "Well, who else's words are you going to use, Shakespeare's?" you may well ask. Hmm, that's not a bad idea, but I'll save that for another part of the site. No, I'm going to use my own words...from the past!!! How far back we going? Well, we will need the obligatory one-point twenty-one gigawatts, but we're only going back to October 9th, 2000. And on that date, from my journal:

I'd met [Sarah] before the camping trip, and I'd heard of her long before I ever met her. Matt told me that he and Carey had been talking and had thought that this girl and I could be a good match for one another. I was a bit unenthusiastic about the concept of being matched, but I trust Matt and Carey's judgement, and as Matt put it, we weren't so much being matched as Matt and Carey simply hoped for us to meet one another.

Down the road a bit, I had all but forgotten that this topic had come up, when on a certain Wednesday (August 23rd, I think), Brian informed me that the girls at GBCN needed some extra hands with moving into the dorms. I took some of my morning to go over to help out, and I had helped several girls without anything impressionable happening. I was needing to finish up, so I went to help the last person before I had to return to Tech.

I helped her with her things, and I noticed that she was quite a bit more comfortable with chatting than the other girls had been. I mentioned that my sister had just started at Berry. She informed me that she had gone to Berry, which I thought funny because I joke with Matt and with Vicki about how I hope to find a nice, outdoorsy, capable Berry girl.

So we chatted a bit more, but I was pressed for time, and had to head out. When I was saying goodbye, I noticed that this girl had such a genuine, beautiful smile.

So, When Matt told me later that month that I had unwittingly helped the very girl that he and Carey had wanted me to meet, my surprise was fairly large {Editor's note: I have no idea why I didn't just write, "I was really surprised!"}. I thought of that smile and linked it to the name that I had heard months before...Without conniving of any party, and with no intent on either of our parts, we had met and had "hit it off," in a way. I couldn't have asked for a better way to have met her.