It was such a weird one-in-a-million thing.

I used to work for a major appliance manufacturer, running a powder coating process. Other than me, there were four people directly involved in the process - one to hang parts on a conveyor line to be washed, another to take them from the wash line to the powder line, another to take the powder-covered but unfired parts off the powder line and put them on the furnace line, and finally, once the parts were fired in a furnace to shiny perfection, a person to take them off the furnace line, verify they are perfect (or good enough that someone who doesn't see thousands of cooktops a day won't notice a defect) and put them in a rack which is carted off to assembly.

Well one day, the day who was supposed to be in the furnace area was gone. Start of the shift. I knew this individual well enough to know he'd he trying to chat up some beautiful woman half his age. I found him trying to "train" a gorgeous young woman who was taking another color of part off another line, and I let him know he had parts coming. He didn't want to leave, but he had to.

I, being no better a person, apologized to the woman, introduced myself, found out her name, and went back to my area. And I couldn't get her out of my head. I stopped to talk to her at lunch, and she was very friendly. Talked about her dogs and falling off atv's with her friends and all sorts of things. I couldn't belive it. This supernaturally pretty woman was talking to me? I asked for her email address. This eventually led to me getting her number, and us talking outside of work... and we fell for each other hard. She was the best girlfriend anyone could ask for. I wiped out on a bicycle one evening and she came to get me off the side of the road, took me to the hospital, took my bike home, and took me home afterwards. When I proposed to her, I still had the cast on my hand. I had a patch of velcro on the palm, and I put the other side of the velcro on the box with the ring in it. She was so excited she forgot to say yes at first.

I don't remember what day it was when I met her. Sometime in 2007. But that day was the dividing line in my life. There is before I met her, and there is after I met her. We've been married 14 years, and everything good in my life is because of her.