Pages

Wednesday, February 3, 2016

A Guest Post by my friend Jennifer


“That doesn’t count as a blog post,” I tell him.
“Pardon?” He asks.
“That thing you posted last night.  That “happily ever after” nonsense.  It doesn’t count as a blog post.”
“Well then why don’t you write me a guest blog post?” He challenges me.
And so I am.
* * * * *
1995
University College
University of Toronto
Downtown Toronto, Ontario
Canada
I am in my third year of my undergraduate degree.  This thing called “email” is brand spanking new.  There is no internet en masse as we know it today.  There is no Facebook, no Twitter, no Instagram.  There are cell phones, but they are the size of a lunch box and prohibitively expensive.  When I listen to music on my commute to and from school, it is using a yellow Sony Walkman accompanied by a bag full of cassette tapes.  When I leave home, there is no getting in contact with me unless I used a pay phone (remember those?!?) to call home and check the messages on my answering machine. 
This is the state of life, this is the state of technology, or lack thereof, when I am “introduced” to Lawrence Reiter.
As with all of my best friendships, I do not remember exactly when or how our introduction came about.  I do recall that a South African friend from high school had a cousin who lived in South Africa and Lawrence was “friends” with her cousin.  Kind of like how Ernie and Bert are “friends” on Sesame Street….  But I digress….

I had just received my first email account in 1995.  Very few people had email in 1995.  I received my email account through school and somehow or other I was given Lawrence’s email account information (or was he given mine) and we started corresponding, me from Toronto and him in South Africa.  There was the huge time difference to contend with and responses most certainly were not instantaneous (How could they be?  There was the torturous process of dial up internet to deal with….) but somehow from this new technology a beautiful courtship was born.
Or so I believed. 
These were the days before Match.com and Plenty of Fish.  The most “advanced” technology in dating at the time was in the form of “tele-personals” where you’d dial a phone number, listen to recorded messages and decide if you wanted to leave a message in return.  <Shudder>  These were the good old days where you actually MET people, IN PERSON, and decided based on that IN PERSON meeting whether you wanted to date them. 
So I was quite enchanted when my friend gave me Lawrence’s contact information (or did she give him mine?) and, suffering from the delusional belief that we were being set up to live happily ever after, we exchanged emails.  Being young and naïve, I didn’t find it creepy that he was constantly in a laboratory at all hours of the day and night checking in on his “cultures”. We got to know each other.  As much as you can know someone you have never met, never spoken with, who lives at the opposite end of the world, in a completely different time zone and who is not, as it turns out, completely honest about the minor details of his life.  Like the fact that he prefers cock.  But again I digress…..
What I wouldn’t do to have those emails today.

Eventually, the day came when, miracle of miracles, my beloved Lawrence, my future Jewish doctor husband was coming to Toronto to meet me!  It would be love at first site, we would consummate our intentions and I would finally, finally, live my happily ever after.
You can all stop laughing now.

* * * * *
It is 2008.
Downtown Toronto, Ontario
Canada.
Winter.
Snowstorm.
My second marriage.
My first child.
Lawrence is in Toronto. 
He is moving here.
We are driving around with my infant daughter in the Volvo Lawrence had just licked scouting out different parts of the city for he and Keith and their fur babies to live.
A few months later, the big move takes place.
And we all find our happily ever after.  


42.64

No comments: