MY VALENTINE’S STORY
Happy Valentine's Day : Eman
You might think of me as some dweeb slaving over his keyboard all day with not much else going on but CCIE Agenting, recruiting and doing presentations, but you are wrong. I am a man very much in love with my wife of almost twenty years who I got the attention of one Valentine’s Day way back in 1989. Yup we are a couple who started our journey together over a Valentine’s Day card and a red rose.
Let me tell you our story.
I left Dallas, Texas with my one of my younger brothers, Jesse for Elkton, Maryland. He had plans to leave home for the east coast and asked me to go with him. I really did not give it much thought and tossed a pile of dirty clothes into a trash bag and got a bumper hitch to tow his old Porsche and we headed east. I was driving my pickup truck with his little red Porsche attached to the back all the way to Maryland. Sometimes we don’t know what the consequences of our decisions in life will be. You roll the dice and wait to see what happens. This decision to leave home for the both of us was a huge leap. Professionally for me, an IT guy with IBM systems skills based upon mainframe operations and manipulating JCL the future was uncertain.
I left that job without resigning or even picking up my pay check.
I started from nothing at the age of thirty four in a new world with no job and no friends with no woman in my life. I was visiting with my brother at the hospital he worked as a radiologist for one day when I first spotted her. She was quite and soft spoken and really paid me no mind when I asked someone to introduce us. I had been working in construction while I was looking for an IT job. That Valentine’s Day I decided to just walk into the blood bank where she worked and give her a card and a red rose. I was determined to ask her to go out with me. I had had a bad day so I did not get a chance to clean up before I needed to catch her at the end of her shift. So dirty from work and dressed as if I had been crawling through the mud I walked into the hospital and right up to her. When I walked in her friend and coworker looked up at me in surprise. Charleyne stopped what she was doing and turned around to face me. I was kind of nervous and handed her the card and the rose. What happened next were a shock and an embarrassment to me.
She began to laugh in my face. I was clueless as to why and retreated from the room and back to my car and left. I had also decided that day to drive over to a bank I had applied for work at so I went back to my apartment cleaned up and drove over there. It was not my new job yet but I was determined to make a couple of changes in my life. The VP of IT was in his office when I walked in and I told him that I knew he needed me to come in to work that evening. He said OK and I started work that night running the systems for them and beginning their transition plans to upgrade their systems. Next day I called the Blood Bank and left a message. I received a call at work the next night and it was Charleyne apologizing for laughing at me the way she did. You see her friend was kidding her about how no one would give her a Valentines Card this year because she had been such a mean person. So when I showed up it was assumed I was part of a practical joke. She told me she was very sorry and I asked her to go out with me for dinner the coming weekend.
Rudolph Valentino - Tango Kisses II
The card had a picture of Rudolph Valentino on it. In the photo he was sweeping some young lady off her feet in a swoon. Under the photo it read, “I am dying to meet you.” She still has the card and I still have the love of my life.
I got my career back on track and fell in love on the same day. How I became the CCIE Agent is a much longer story, but my wife knows it maybe she will tell you someday how tough it is to be married to Eman!
Happy Valentine’s Day to you all and I wish you love and happiness in 2010!