How I Met Your Father.

The other day my oldest asked me how I met his father (also known as my husband).  Truth is, I couldn't come up with a child friendly way to explain it to him.  He ended up with, "It was a long time ago, in a galaxy far far away".  The good thing is that all of you wonderful people who read my blog get to hear the real story as I am assuming your virgin ears won't be tarnished.  And a good story it is.

The year was 1998, I was a year out of college and working a real job and living in a crappy apartment with some friends in wonderful Quincy, Massachusetts.  I was loving life.  I partied hard and often (ok all of you co workers of mine that are reading this, yes, it is true, I haven't always been an old mother prude).  My second home was at a little dive Irish bar called Sarsfield's.

Now what was so special about Sarsfield's you ask?  Well, for starters it was a major sausage fest and I almost never had to pay for a drink.  For another it was a two dollar cab ride home.  And for a third, it was a haven for the Irish.  Being a good Irish American girl I felt the need to mingle with those from the home land.  Oh and did I mention I almost never had to pay for a drink?

But to get back to the story at hand, I was hanging at Sarsfield's with my crazy ass friend Liz one Sunday night (June 14th to be exact).  It was usually Liz that I dragged to the bar with me as she could throw them back like nobody else I knew and was always a good conversation piece because of all of her various tattoos (this was back before tattoos were as hot as they are now).  We were sitting at a table having a drink when we realized that we were being stared down by an "interesting" group of guys across the bar.  By interesting I mean two head bangers with hair down to their asses, a skin head and a guy with enormous ears. 

Liz and I, back in the day.

After being ogled for about a half and hour the one with the ears walked over with two fresh Bud Lights and handed them to us and said that he and the boys wanted to buy us a drink.  He put them down and walked away, back to his table.  Liz and I just looked at each other and shook out heads.  Naive Irish boys, obviously they were a little green in the way of life in America.  Liz, being Liz, stood up, walked over to the guys and explained to them that it would in fact be alright for them to come over and talk with us, they did buy us a drink after all.  They pulled over some chairs and the craic began.  (For those of you not versed in Irish slang craic basically means fun).

See what I mean about the ears.  So cute.

It turns out that this "interesting" group of guys was actually a riot.  Granted, they were so fresh off the boat we could only understand about half of what they were saying between the thick brogues and the insane amount of alcohol we consumed.  At one point I think I agreed to some rather scandalous behavior out of share misunderstanding which thankfully never happened.  The skin head was all over Liz and it was clear that the one with the ears was infatuated with me (duh, of course he was, who wouldn't be).  We danced like crazy and I spent most of the time on the dance floor removing hands from my breasts.  We closed out the bar and said our good nights and I figured that was the end of that story.

The longhairs with the owner of Sarsfield's.  And those are not wigs.  They dyed their hair white for a Gaelic Football match.

Turns out I was wrong.  A couple of nights later we returned to the bar to find ears and the longhairs checking us out again.  The skin head was no where to be seen and to this day my husband swears he wasn't there the first night.  Liz would beg to differ on that one as he was a bit on the creepy side.  The boys came over with drinks again and this time sat down.  Turns out that we never actually found out their names that first night so that was a bit awkward so we were re introduced to Alan, Brad and Mark.  The night turned into another blurry beer and dance filled event.  As did several more in the upcoming weeks.

Three weeks later Alan moved in with me.  Six months later we were engaged and six months after that we were married.  It was a bit whirlwind to say the least.  Liz never did get involved with the longhairs (I think she was holding out hope that the skin head would come back) but she always came along for the fun and because she could actually translate what the hell Alan was saying most of the time.

 It was been almost fourteen years since that night.  Alan's ears have thankfully evened out with his head.   I can understand every word that comes out of his mouth now.  We have two wonderful children.  Neither one of us drinks at all anymore and life could not be any better.  For anybody out there that thinks you can't find the perfect person at a bar I beg to differ.  That is where I found my prince.

Pure happiness!