His Version

Most people tell of how they meet someone as a moment in time or an instantaneous event.  This is not one of those stories.  The process of this meeting would actually take about ten years! In the mid-nineties I moved to Windsor, Ontario to work for a large whisky producer.  This was much to my mother’s shock but that’s a completely different story for another time.  As part of my work I would spend a large amount of time in contact with the “IT Help Desk” (not a well named department actually since they were typically of only limited help).  Most calls would originate with one technical geek and she was no doubt very new since she almost always had to get assistance from a more capable employee name David (aka Horace, again another story for another time).  Almost without exception my  calls to the Help Desk were redirected in short order to Dave.

I left Windsor in 2001 and never gave further thought to the poor front line “Help Desk” support , but did keep in touch with Dave over the following years. In 2008 Dave and his wife Carmela brought some friends, including Heather (one of the Help Desk geeks at my old employeer in Windsor), to visit me at the farm.   The visit involved a bit of a farm tour, a lengthy boat cruise and barbeque back at the farm.

That day would be the first to bring us to where we are today.  The geek from the Help Desk poor initially showing in tech support has come to mean the world to me (her moose calls aren’t bad either).

And no doubt she now realizes that ………….. I am a keeper.

Her Version

Actually, my first encounters with Greg were over the phone. And not very pleasant. At the time, I was working as a Helpdesk agent at a local company in Windsor, Ontario, which involved taking calls from employees and assisting with computer-related issues. Greg was also an employee of that company, and on occasion would call the Helpdesk with computer issues. Now, I was used to callers that were frustrated or angry at whatever issue they were having, and took it all in stride. Greg, on the other hand, was also cocky and arrogant. I couldn’t stand taking calls from him. So when his name would pop up on the Helpdesk phone, I would immediately pass him off to another agent so I didn’t have to deal with him. Usually that other agent was Dave, who would typically visit Greg at his office to sort out whatever the issue was. Turns out, they became good friends, and kept in touch long after both Greg and Dave left the company. Dave and I became good friends as well. It was another ten years before I met Greg in person. I was in Toronto visiting Dave and his wife Carm for the weekend, and Greg (having also moved to Toronto by this time) invited us to his place for drinks. It was a short visit but a good time. And I noticed that he was no longer cocky and arrogant, he actually seemed like a nice guy.

A few months later, I was in Toronto again for a family wedding. Greg had just moved to cottage country outside Peterborough and invited a group of us on a boat cruise on Stoney Lake, followed by dinner at his farm house. It was a great day and evening, with a lot of laughs. Sometime that evening, I knew things had changed. That once irritating helpdesk caller had become a funny and charming gentleman. There was a spark. A couple months later we had our first date. And the rest is history…