It was the summer of '91 and the first time in my life since I'd began dating that I found myself alone.  I just came off an engagement break-up and had met a girl at college who went home for the summer.  She would eventually become my first wife seven years later but all I could see at that time was a bleak summer where most my friends and prospective dates had deserted town for the familiarity of home.

The blind date from hell entered my life through a wrong number.  My roommate at the time, Matt, answered the phone one night and began talking to this chick.  He was in a relationship so to him, it was a novelty to talk to a complete stranger with no expectations or responsibility.  They'd never meet, so what harm was it?

Then one night while Matt was at work, I answered the phone.  It was the mystery girl.  I forget her name but we'll call her Becky.

I was bored and lonely so therefore, as a perfectly normal male, I talked to Becky.  This was before the advent of internet chat rooms or internet dating; it was before the internet existed as we know it.  So a wrong number with a female voice on the other end was as exciting and mysterious as my boring life could get.

It was an innocuous conversation with a little flirtation because we were strangers and in our mind's eye, we were whoever we wanted to fantasize we were.

Becky had a strong Southern accent and said she looked sort of like Madonna.  Since I grew up out in the boonies, I have a soft spot for country girls.  Especially ones that look like Madonna.  My imagination pictured her lounging around in cutoffs and a t-shirt, barefoot, twirling her pigtails.  

Because I was single, she stopped talking to Matt and only called me from that point on.

We chatted several times over the period of a few weeks before the ungly head of Loneliness reared back and bellowed with the fuel of all my manly hormones.  Becky agreed to meet on what was my first blind date ever.  It was also my last.

I'm a romantic at heart so when she agreed to meet, I had visions of telling our grandchildren how their grandmother and I met.  Because of a wrong number.  Talk about weaving fate and love into timeless story ...

(continued next week)