Our Anniversary

In May I attended my first JavaOne conference. It was a wonderful experience and I feel more educated for it. In general I've not attended technical conferences and I am beginning to see them as perfect for where I am in my career.

The nice thing about JavaOne, which I'm sure applies to many other conferences, is that they keep you busy, pretty much all day, from 8AM to Midnight. After a couple of days I was totally exhausted, and I eventually got sick. But this story has nothing to do with that.

The point is, I got to see my good friend Amy. She didn't attend JavaOne, but she lives in San Francisco and there was no way I was going to miss visiting her. But I was so tired, so utterly exhausted from the conference that it was hard to find time for her.

Finally, I called her one afternoon. "I'm free this evening. I'd love to meet you somewhere, but if you came to the hotel -- I hear they have a nice restaurant."

Amy was more than willing to travel, and we wound up having a great time.

I asked her how she was. "Great," she said. "Kim and I are celebrating our five-year anniversary."

"No," I said. "You haven't been with Kim for five years, you've been with her for six."

Amy disagreed. "No. It's been five years."

I persisted. "No. It's six. Right? Cause you got together with Kim just shortly after I started dating Beth, and that was six years ago. In fact, today is the anniversary of our first date."

Amy said, "No... wait. Are you sure?"

"Yeah, I'm sure. It's six years. Beth and I are six years, so you and Kim are six years."

"Wow," said Amy.

"Right. Because Beth and I met in 2000, and ... so that's ... no ... wait ... we met in 2001 ... it's not six ... OH NO!"

Amy said, "What?"

I covered my face with my hands, "Oh, man!"

"What?" said Amy.

So I told Amy, "Oh, man, I can't believe it. See, OK. A couple of weeks ago, Beth was lying on the bed, and I told her, I said 'Beth, you know what I just realized? You're going to be in Montreal during the anniversary of our first date, and I'm going to be in San Francisco, so we're going to miss it.'"

'Aww...' said Beth.

'Yeah,' I said. Then I paused to lay my trap. 'Can you believe we've been together for four years?'

Beth said, 'Wow. I can't believe it was that long.'

Now I had her trapped, so I said, triumphantly, 'You big dummy! I can't believe you don't remember! It hasn't been four years, it's SIX!'"