I Am Not A Leg-Rubbing Hussy!

This month's topic, “how you met your spouse” would make for some pretty dry reading. I met him through his brother, with whom I worked. It was game night. A box of Trivial Pursuits. What can I say? It was the late 80s.

Instead, I wanted to tell you about the first “date”, which wasn’t so much a date as an arranged (by me) group purchase of tickets to Les Miserables, some tactical maneuvering (by me) to make sure I was sitting beside my future husband, followed by the twenty-three-year maligning of my character, (by him).

In recounting the story of our first not-quite-date-with-a-group-of-people-who-all-happened-to-purchase-a-block-of-tickets-to-Les-Mis, the love of my life maintains that I, “kept rubbing my leg against his” through the whole performance, making it impossible for him to be unaware of my blatant interest in him.

I protest!!! First, let me just say, I never, ever, EVER made the first move. But if I did decide to go outside my comfort zone and be the leg-rubbing-hussy that I’ve been accused of being, I would have been more creative than that. Sheesh! I write fiction, for cryin'-out-loud!

Just as an “off-the-top-of-my-head” scenario, it would have gone something like this: After jockeying for the ticketed seat beside his, I would have done something clever, like drop my program, waited for him to bend to pick it up, then gone down a fraction of a second later and head butted him into unconsciousness. Then it would simply have been a matter of dragging all six-foot-five-inches of him down a couple of flights of stairs, (no elevator in that theater), propping him up in a shadowy alcove while I drove the car around from the parking garage, and shoving his unconscious bulk into the backseat. Voila.

Or what if I had let that other woman in our group have that ticketed seat beside his, and I just marched down the aisle with an “excuse me. Pardon me. Excuse me,” checked my ticket, and told her, “there seems to be some sort of mistake here. I believe you have inadvertently received the ticket beside my future husband. Sorry. We’ll have to trade seats.”

(Rubbed my leg against his through the whole show. Pffft.)

A couple of years ago, we gave my daughter tickets to see Wicked. It was in the same theater where my husband and I saw Les Miserables so many years ago. I got to be the parent who got the other ticket and drove our pre-licensed teenaged daughter to see the show while my husband stayed at home with the too-squirmy-to-sit-through-the-show younger sibling. It was fabulous! It was “WICKED”. It was… cramped! 

During intermission, everyone stood, if not to race to the line forming at the restroom, then at least to stretch. There was a lovely gentleman seated beside me – his family fanned out down the aisle on his opposite side. As we all stood, stretching, he shook out his leg, and flexed his toes, cursing a cramp in his calf. He turned to me and said, “I am so sorry. The seats in this theater are so cramped. I promise you, I’m not intentionally brushing your leg with mine.” He was about the same height and breadth as my husband.

I should have had him write it in a note. Then I’d have written proof that I am not a leg-rubbing hussy!

Epilogue: The next day (after the first not-quite-a-date-with-a-group-of-people-from-work), my husband called me at work to invite me out for lunch. It was lovely, giddy, and ended when he walked me back to my office and left me with a hug and a promise to get-together again soon. ;) The rest is twenty-three years of history.