How I Met Your Mother

"And when she smiles the whole world stops and stares for a while." -Bruno Mars

Everything happens for a reason. You hear that a lot when something bad happens to you or when you're faced with a challenge.

It almost never makes you feel any better, but it's true.

I have proof.

In the summer before my sophomore year in college, my parents closed the swimming pool business they had owned for the better part of two decades. I realized a tuition bill would just add another burden; so I offered to take the semester off until they got their financial house in order. We agreed that I would return to school in January no matter what.

I did nothing but work that semester, and in January I was back on campus. But I'd have to make up that semester I missed. I would graduate in the fall, not the spring, of '97.

Good thing.

Because that's the semester that changed my life forever, and for the better.

That smile started it all

It started at the end of the spring '97 semester. The semester I should have graduated.

We fit perfectly together

She was across the room during a party at my fraternity house. She smiled at me. I thought that smile meant that she was interested in me. Later I found out she was just bored, and was passing time by smiling at anyone she could lock eyes with, pretending to flirt. It's a good thing. That smile gave me the courage to ask her out. That's the first thing I did that next semester. The fall of '97. The make-up semester.

The rest, as they say... is in this blog.

Happily ever after: 12/7/02

I graduated. We did long distance. She graduated. We moved in together. Got married. Bought a home. Got a dog. Had a baby. Bought a house. And are living happily ever after as I write.

 All because of a smile.

If not for that smile, who knows how my life would have turned out?

I'm so glad that everything happens for a reason. My daughter wouldn't be here today if it weren't true.

So next time you hear it... as much as you don't want to... believe it.