There she is...ready...GET HER!!!!

Debbie submitted the following question: "how did you meet your wife, and what did you do to trick her into marrying you?" Thanks to Debbie for playing Stump the Moron...If you have a question you would like to ask Jay, submit it here.

I was the marrying kind. Nobody said it, but half a brain could see that I was the guy that girls got to know and THEN saw as a prospect. But for a long time in my twenties, after a couple of relationship choices that went awry, I found myself hanging with a bar crowd. A group of guys who found our way out to the proving grounds 4 or 5 nights a week, and tried our damnedest to impress a female.

Only, I had zero game. In fact, one of my more sensitive buddies once commented, "Carl has some jokes, Brian has the body, Brad has the great approach, and Jay, well...Jay has the hair." And he was right. I had good hair. Once I got into a conversation with a pretty girl, I could sometimes develop some interest, but I was certainly not the guy that most women picked out of the testosterone-laden herd of morons and said, "mmmm...yummy." I had no approach. If I hoped to find a pretty girl to make my wife, I was gonna have to rope her in, tie her down (figuratively, if not literally), and force her to listen to me.

Which brings me to that fateful night.

The venue in question was the picture of class, the perfect place to find a spouse, Lulu's Bait Shack. Such a cosmopolitan locale of poise and blue blood was a regular stop for our group of wayward pigs, and this particular night, we brought our friend Cindy to add a touch of "hot" to our "not". Cindy was a 6 foot blonde beauty who found us more amusing than anything, and we happily brought her with us anytime we felt she might make us look like we had...something...anything.

Cindy and I stood near the bar, both surveying the terrain for subjects to suit our individual tastes, when I noticed her. She walked past, attached to her own friend, and appeared to be making a familiar lap around the establishment, and immediately I was drawn to her. There was something very familiar about her looks, and I found myself trying to decide who she resembled...there was a touch of Tea Leoni...some Jenna Elfman...and enough of both to deepen my interest. I pointed her out to Cindy right off, again when she completed her second lap, and then her third. And finally, Cindy called me out.

"Go and talk to her, moron!" While I always appreciated her company, Cindy could very quickly dissect my manhood.

"I seriously have nothing to say, Cindy, let alone the fact that she has her friend in tow, and I would be on stage for both."

Cindy looked at me as only a woman with absolutely no respect for a man could, and said, "FINE. I am gonna do it." And then, to my horror, she crossed the 8 feet between our huddle and Tea Leoni, and said with disgust, "My friend wants to meet you."

The blood drained from my face, regrouped with the rest of the blood in my body, and flooded my face once more. I placed one pathetic foot in front of the other, crossed the 8 foot abyss to take my place on stage in front of now THREE, and introduced myself.

Now, to say that I could now recount anything that came out of my mouth from that point on would underestimate your intelligence, and overestimate my 40 yr old capacity for long term recollection, so I wont even try, but we covered the basics at least. Her name was Kat, she was a nursing student, her friend looked enough like her to be a sister, but wasn't, and despite my repeated attempts to make a fool of myself in front of her that night, she stayed and heard me out. And at the end of the evening, as Lulu's upper crust was ushered out into the night air, she gave me her number, and then it happened. She kissed me.

It seemed at the time that it was an evening of gifts, you see...Cindy's introduction, Kat's audience, and then the utter shock of a kiss from a pretty girl...all of which unexpected, and yet pathetically appreciated. Turns out my biggest hurdle that evening was 8 feet, and regardless of the process, I had enough to cross it.

You know all the times you have heard people say "Don't look for Mr./Mrs. Right in a bar"? Those people are right, but not about what you think...they are more right about the "going looking" part...Finding someone who will give you their life is more about being the best person you can, which opens you up to the world and makes you more beautiful inside and out, regardless of surroundings. Develop YOU, and be found by the person who likes the person you built. Unfortunately, the real irony of this lesson is that by the time you really figure it out, you have already "caught your limit".

Last night as Kat, our son, daughter and I created a memory dancing in our living room, I found myself thinking about our first night at Lulu's. That was a night of gifts, true, but somewhere in there I must have done something good.