“So um, can I get you a towel?” I said, trying to be helpful.

“Yes, that would be nice.” she replied, blowing her wet hair out of her face. She was drenched from the rain and had a slightly exasperated, but also humored expression. So, I went off to my room to get a towel for her so she could dry off. I thought to myself that she looked like someone who hadn’t been scarred or embittered by life yet, but yet didn’t look naive, either. Like all freshmen, she still had a squeaky-cleaness about her that hadn’t been marred by Georgia Tech yet. A freshman. That meant she was far too young for me.

So let’s fill in a little background here. Every fall, when the new school year begins, the fraternities and sororities conduct Rush to recruit new freshmen. Fraternities generally hold parties for all of Rush Week and the freshman men wander from house to house as they please, eating free food and talking to brothers. (I have remarked before that it’s a little like “Trick or Treat” for freshmen with the candy being hot dogs, hamburgers and such.) Sororities meanwhile have a very rigid and ordered process by which they parade all of the freshman girls from house to house and then there is a meticulous process where the girls narrow down the houses they like and the houses narrow down the girls they want. From outsider’s view, it’s a very stressful process for both sides.

At the end of the process is one of the best days of the year for a young man. Bid Day. The girls all go to the Student Center at the middle of campus to where a list is posted by each sorority of their new pledges. From there, they are supposed to run back to their sorority house to accept their bid. Boys all across campus set up couches along the roads from the Student Center to the Greek houses to watch the girls run by. Yes, these are the future leaders of your country.

The cap off the day, the sororities then march their new pledges around campus to introduce them to each of the fraternities on campus. At each house that evening, the pledges sing a song for the fraternity and then the fraternity would then in turn sing a song for the girls. It’s all pretty hokey, but it’s also one of the last vestiges of the “romantic old days” when the Greek society was about more than just draining kegs each Friday night. At our fraternity, we would also give each pledge a rose. The brother would give the pledge a rose, the pledge would say, “awwwww”, and the brother would foolishly think he actually had a chance with that girl.

Now, up until my fourth year in college, sororities and I had pretty much stayed at arms length. I had a girlfriend and none of the girls in the sororities really seemed interested in getting to know me, so we had an understanding. That all changed when some of my good friends entered Rush in 1996. They all ended up in the same sorority and so now I actually had regular contact with girls in a sorority. Now, all of the sudden, I was getting invited to their parties (and I’m sure my girlfriend loved that was now getting invites to sorority parties) and social functions. I had an “in”, if you will.

(Our fraternity at Bid Day 1996… see if you can spot Jeff!)

In the fall of 1997, I was still smarting from my breakup about six months ago and in a pretty cynical mood with girls. I remember that Bid Day was a rainy one. I remember sitting on the porch of our house and watching my brothers as they all stood out in the rain, each pitifully holding a rose, waiting the girls to arrive and getting soaked to the bone. “What a sorry lot we are”, I mused, “all of this for ten seconds of attention from a girl.”

One of my friends in one of the sororities was going to be a “sister-mom” that year. That meant she was in charge of one of the freshman pledges. She was to play the role of a big sister and help her through her first year. She made me promise to meet her pledge and introduce them to the other brothers so that she could meet some nice, Christian guys. So, it was on that night that she guided this young lady, looking like a drowned rat, up to me and I uttered the first words I ever said to her.

I knew better than to get involved with a freshman. I knew her first year at Georgia Tech would probably be filled with some rash decisions and difficult struggles, as they are for every freshman, and my heart was in no place to be one of her rash decisions. But I did have to admit that she was pretty cute. I sure wouldn’t mind if she made some friends at the house so that she would come around from time to time, so I was more than happy to introduce her to some other brothers.

I had no idea that I had just met my future wife.