Big Ugly Man Doll

Twenty years ago today, when I was young and she was younger, my lovely bride became SOBUMD, although in all fairness neither of us knew that at the time.  (For starters, I was a much smaller man doll.) 

Over the years, many people have asked me how we met.  Many other people have asked me “what’s with the hat, dude?”  I will now reveal the truth.

We met in a January, cold and dark, in Morgantown, West Virginia, working at the school paper, the Daily Athenaeum.  (You are not required to pronounce it correctly for the purposes of this post.) It will surprise most of you not at all to learn that I was a copy editor, with a desk on the 3rd floor.  (It was an old, literally ramshackle building that was once someone’s house.)  SOBUMD worked in the basement, in production and paste-up (we’re that old!), getting the printed words that I (and my peers) had edited out the door to our printer for the next day’s headlines.  At the time, the paper had (and I believe still does have) one of the largest circulations in the state – it’s been printed continuously since 1887. 

But where was I?  Oh yes, I was editing the paper and reading the live AP feed, which was the closest you had to Google News those days, on a dark January afternoon.  This stunning brunette came walking into my office area, looked at my hat, and put it on her head.  “Nice hat,” she said. 

When We Was Young

And she walked out. 

I walked into the next office and found the City Editor.  “Hey man, did you just see a good looking girl walk by in my hat?”   He said that he had.  “Who was that?” 

“I don’t know, honestly.  I think she works in production.”

It took me three days to find her.  I had to marry her – it was the only way to get my hat back. 

And to this day, it looks better on her than me.  Happy Anniversary to my SOBUMD, without whom none of this would be possible!   We’re still young, and the next 20 years will be even better.

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