At the beginning of my sophomore year in college, I had to report a week early to go through music auditions for my music scholarship because I was majoring in music.  Many music scholarship* people had to go a week early to the university before classes started.  We auditioned and were assigned to a band, orchestra, or performance group as it was a requirement.  Since many of us were friends, we would go through auditions and then spend time having dinner, playing cards, and having many fun conversations.  At that time, there were no iPads, iPhones, tablets, etc. 

There weren’t Netflix or streaming movies, and we didn’t have a DVD player, so we went for walks, talked, played cards, board games, etc., because it was before the school year had started.

 

One night, my friends (about 7) and I decided to take a walk across campus because it was a beautiful late summer evening in the early part of September.  There was a beautiful fountain in the middle of the campus, and we walked there together.  We sat down at the fountain talking, and suddenly a guy was walking by himself across the campus and by the fountain.  

 

We did not know who this guy was, but we were brave and said Hello and called him over.  He came over and said hello, and we talked and asked him his name.  He told us to guess* his name.  Because we were crazy and silly college kids, we tried but couldn't figure out his name, so he said he would give us a hint by playing the game of charades.  Charades is a game where no words are spoken but only gestures used to guess the phrase, item, etc.  

 

After about 20 minutes, we finally guessed his name.  His name was Michael.  My roommate asked him to join us on a walk, and he decided to come along and then came back to our dorm* with us.  My friends and I spent about two more hours talking with him, and we had a lot of fun conversations.  He left that night, and I went on with my sophomore year in college.

 

He decided to start visiting our dorm, and I was so busy, I never got to see him because I was so busy with my classes, homework, and practicing the piano, but my roommate told me he would stop by to visit.  He continued this my entire sophomore year, and I never got to see him.

 

In my junior year, I changed my major to a degree in Arts and Humanities, and my schedule was much lighter.  I was in my dorm room two nights before classes started, and there was a knock on the door, and when I opened it, it was Michael.  That was the night he asked me out on a date.  

 

We dated for about four years and then got married.  We have been married for 31 years.  

A random stranger turned into a significant person in my life. 

*scholarship - an amount of money that is given by a school, an organization, etc., to a student to help pay for the student's education

*guess - to form an opinion or give an answer about something when you do not know much or anything about it

*dorm (short for dormitory) - a building on a school campus that has rooms where students can live


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What was the random stranger's name?