Stars, Doubts, Girls

The other day Ash, Jake, Joey, and I were dinking around the office talking, when someone brought up the idea of dating people with your same birthday. On the one hand, it could be neat and really really convenient (as far as remembering one more important date). But on the other hand, pointed out Ash, it might be a form of cosmological incest.

As the only one in the room that had actually pulled this off, I can say it does have a certain creepiness to it. I once dated a girl exactly one year younger than me, and it was weird, but not in the way you might think. The thing was that we had way more in common than our birthday.

For one, we met at a concert. A concert we were both performing in. I was standing in the wings after performing my song for the BYU Guitars Unplugged concert a few years ago when I noticed that the girl presently performing was pretty good. I mean, I don't want to rag on girls or anything, but the truth is that it's kinda rare to meet a guitar-playing girl who actually has good technique, good rhythm, and a good voice. And good song-writing skills.¹ She had red hair, and this pink light was shining down on her like magic, making her all strawberries-and-cream.

Which brings me to the next thing we had in common: good looks.

Tom and I tearing it up at the concert.
You can't tell, but under my jeans my left leg
is in a splint since I had torn my ACL skiing
just a week or so before this.
Anyway, my brother got her number for me² since he worked at the same place as her, and we went out a few times. I remember we went on a walk once early on and we were asking each other questions—you know those first-date-ish questions like "What's your favorite ____?" or "If you could change one thing about yourself what would it be?"—well, I'd ask her one of those and silently be thinking up my own answer, and then she'd say exactly what I was thinking. It was weird. I asked her when her birthday was, and when she said, "June 11," I died. It was like I was falling in love with myself; it felt so wrong—but I was so attractive.

We sat in my living room and sang "Somethin' Stupid," crowding together around a sheet of lyrics as I shuffled out the chords on my guitar. She fell into the harmonies so naturally as to melt my bones.

Sometime midweek I realized that her initials were S. G. My initials, not counting my middle name, are S. G. Walking to pick her up for our next date, I reeled off D-names in my mind: Danielle, Darcy, Daphne, Deborah, Diane, Dawn, Dorothy, Drew. SDG: Stephen David Grover. SDG: Super Dateable Girl. June 11, 1981. June 11, 1982. SDG: Sensible Days Gone.

Sudden Death, Grover.

Sense of Doom Growing.

I knocked on her door, and practically before saying hello I demanded to know her middle name, sure it was Desdemona, Deliliah, Davida.

"I don't have one," she smiled.

"Oh," I said.

So we were S. G. and S. D. G. 1981 and 1982. We went out a few more times, but nothing ever really happened. Perhaps we would've been star-crossed, ill-fated, cosmologically unsuited—we never got far enough to find out. Something Didn't Go. That's always been the real mystery for me anyway: why some loves catch and some don't. How all the tumblers can line up but still the key won't turn. It's almost a miracle when it does, when one person likes another at the same time that that person likes them—it's a shuttle-launch window, a total solar eclipse. It's a real miracle, and yet it happens uncounted times every day as our planet tumbles and rolls on to the stars.


¹ Before you jump to conclusions, let me explain. It's rare to find anyone, male or female, that combines all these skills. It seems like no one gets through college without learning a few chords and how to play "Free Fallin'" or that Green Day song that was the emblem of everyone's senior class a few years back. But so few ever take it further, ever learn how to really play. And given that the proportion of guitar-playing males to the skilled guitar-playing males is completely bonkers, and taking into account that there are that many fewer girls than boys picking up guitars to begin with, it follows that there are very very few girls who can do more than play third-rate Jewel covers.^3
2Actually he got a whole date with her. What a bro: he asked a girl out on my behalf. That's going above and beyond.
³ If you were born after, say, 1989, change "Free Fallin'" above to "Wonderwall," "Green Day" to "Dashboard Confessional," and "Jewel" to—I don't know—"Michelle Branch"?