Annie (not her real name) and I met quite by accident. At the time I was traveling the country doing phone sales by day and music at night. Turned out that Annie travelled for business and we happened to end up in the same city and the same club one night.
My position was second drums. In this band that meant I worked with the bass player to hold down the rhythm section and the other drummer played over me with all the fancy stuff. Over the years the band grew into a rather large group, with two drummers, two keyboardists, three guitarists and four horns. We were a cover/tribute band and there never seemed to be a lack of work.
Everyone hangs out after the shows and most of the time people come up to talk and old friends come out of the woodwork. As for me, I am an introvert and never enjoy that part of the evening. I like to do my thing and then kick back.
Minding my own business at the bar having a solo drink, up comes Annie and introduces herself and her friend Ellen (also not her real name). They caught the show purely by accident and started peppering me with questions about the music. They never heard of the band nor any of the music we played and wanted to know all about it. We talked for quite a long time before Ellen called it a night and left. Annie and I remained until the bar closed and we got kicked out.
Since she was going to be in town the rest of the week and we had a couple of rehearsals as well, I invited her to come along and watch. Throughout the rehearsal, I just could not keep my eyes off of her. She was so into the music that she would dance and twirl around without a care as to who saw her. I was seeing into the most unusual, innocent person I had ever met. Little did I know how far it would take us.
Turns out Annie and Ellen were practically sisters who grew up next door to each other and had been on their own since they were teenagers. That is for another story. Annie was an executive with an insurance company and Ellen worked for the government. Ellen refused to tell me what she did there but I am sure I was better off not knowing. While she was friendly, she had a bizarre way of staring at you when you spoke. It was as if she was reading your mind or something more sinister. It was very unnerving.
Annie on the other hand, commanded a large department at her company and was in a powerful position. It was such a polar opposite to her personal self when not at work. Many times she was indecisive, showing a wonder at the things that went on around her as if she had never experienced any of it. She reminded me of a ten or eleven year old always exploring from a standpoint of childish innocence when in fact they were both grown women of about forty.
By day three she started to reveal the personal parts of her life to me and it became apparent we had a connection that neither of us had had before. The more intimate details of her history she revealed, the more confused and apprehensive I became. I had never met anyone like her before and I wasn’t sure what to do with all the information she was giving me. To this day, I still do not understand how it came to be that we met, much less grew that bond, as we came from such different places and only met by circumstance. By the end of the week, it became obvious there was something serious going on between us as we began to coordinate all of our travels in order to spend as much time with each other as possible since we lived in different cities.
Neither of us anticipated anything like this happening and as we went forward, trying to find out how we fit in with each other, it became more exciting with each passing day. Nothing in my life experience had prepared me to meet someone like her. And every hour away from her became agony.
Surprises in The Road of Life 