“Now I know all the wrong turns and stumbles and falls brought me here, but where was I before the day that I first saw your lovely face? Now I see it every day…And I know, that I am the luckiest.”
-Ben Folds
It was over a couple drinks in a dimly lit bar in downtown Naples that Joe and Amanda got to size each other up with what everyone knows is the most important question in deciding if you can possibly date someone: What’s your favorite band? Little did they know that with the answers to that loaded question would ensue years to come of laughter, debates, smiles, tears, late night slow-dances, travel, and a life together.
They followed very different paths to end up there together that night. Joe was just a year or so out of veterinary school from Michigan State and working as a doctor with an emergency clinic in Naples. Amanda had graduated from a small university in Cleveland and was already well into her career as an elementary school teacher. “Oh, veterinary school… so what was that, a two year community college?” Amanda asked, clueless. This is only the beginning of the sarcastic push-pull sense of humor that Joe and Amanda branded their own. Ask either of them to tell the story of how they met, and they will give you two distinctly different, and hilarious stories. Nonetheless, they fit together like puzzle pieces, and filled in the gaps that others had left empty.
Three and a half years later, Joe asked Amanda to marry him, down on one knee, in the same restaurant he’d taken her for their first date on 5th avenue. Now it’s more apparent than ever, that all the wrong turns and stumbles and falls brought them here, … and they are “the luckiest.”
