Ann and I went to the comedy club and had a light dinner. I was driving and working (the experiment I’d left on the NMR), so I didn’t drink but she did. We chatted quietly during dinner and I learned about her brothers and the rest of her family and that she had a dog named Ellie. She shared a house with her older brother the faculty member, and they lived very close to campus. On the way back we would need to drive past it to take Ann back to her car, so we planned to stop to see Ellie on the way home.

We could have talked all night. Actually we did talk well into the night after the comedians finished. She had been married and lived in California for several years. She came home after her divorce and changed her name back to her maiden name. Her father was an avid flyer with his own plane, and she was taking flying lessons on Dad’s Piper Cub. Mom and Dad lived about an hour north of the university and she went home often to visit and for the flying lessons. She planned to get her pilot’s license. As to whether she would use that as a vocation or avocation would depend upon how much fun she had with it.

            “Right now I have a job and it is a good one. But I want a career,” she said.

The more I found out about her, the more interested I became. She said that her divorce had come about because she and her husband had married too young and they grew apart. He loved California and was stationed there in the Navy. When he got out of the service he wanted to stay, but she wanted to come back to Michigan. So, that and what she described as divergent futures led to the divorce. Ann told me all these things about her ex in a sincere but dispassionate tone of voice. She showed no sign of emotional pain or turmoil from her marriage and divorce. She seemed very open and comfortable talking about these very personal subjects on a first date.

The conversation inevitably turned to me and I was far less at ease talking about myself. I told her about my research and that I wanted a career helping people. I told her about my ambulance work and the athletic training I had done earlier. I did not tell her about being fired. I didn’t want her to think that I was a loser getting fired from a GA job.

“Why did you leave the training job?” she asked.

“Well,” I stammered, “I got really interested in research and the type of research I am doing now.”

I went on to tell her about the numbers of people who die of artery-related diseases and that my research could help save thousands of lives. She seemed touched by my emphatic desire to “help people” with my work.

“Did you ever have a job that was not ‘helping people?’” she asked.

“Yes, I did have a job working in a catering delicatessen when I was in high school. It was my first regular job.”

She didn’t say anything so I went on.

“The owners of the deli were cousins and one of them was a graduate of the Culinary Institute of New York. He was a great chef and he taught me all sorts of stuff for food prep in the deli as well as for catering. We would cater weddings, proms, parties—all kinds of events. I learned how to do hot and cold food prep, make sandwiches, and serve people all sorts of prepared foods. It was a lot of fun. I use a lot of recipes from the deli for my own cooking at home. The problem is I can only cook in large quantities.”

Ann laughed and said, “I see—so that is a job where it would be hard to ‘help people.’”

“Actually, there was a time when I was able to use those skills to help people who really needed help,” I replied.

The moment those words came out of my mouth my heart began to race and I felt I had just made a huge blunder. Helping people with deli skills was a story that would require me to talk about an ex girlfriend. The ex in question was not Holly, but I felt it could be a cardinal sin to talk about an ex on a first date. Yes, Ann had talked about her ex husband, but he lived in California. I was bringing up an ex who lived locally. Nonetheless the cat was out of the bag and now the whole story would have to come out.