I don't remember meeting Alli. That is to say, I remember very well the first night we met, but how we came to talking is very fuzzy in my memory. I know we talked, danced, and laughed. I remember being fascinated with the idea that she went to an all-girl Catholic high school where they had to wear uniforms, right down to the plaid skirts. I remember being so amazed by it because it was the kind of thing I associated with the past or fiction - surely places like that couldn't exist today could they? But they do, and that's where she came from. I remember it as the first or second night of freshman orientation at school, the night of the harbor cruise - a mixer wherein all the incoming freshmen from certain residence halls were put onto a boat and floated about San Diego Bay in order to get to know one another. There was a dance floor inside and probably horrendously loud music, most likely whatever rap song was popular. I remember laughing with her at all the people who barely knew each other grinding and sweating it up like a Roman orgy on the dance floor. I remember dancing with her at a safe distance, and secretly wishing I could get in closer like the people we were laughing at. I remember being fascinated with her smallness, a trait I still value, cherish, and worship today. I remember talking to her out on the deck and watching San Diego drift by. I gave her my number and my room number on a pad of paper, as I did to every girl that night. I had delusions of becoming a "player" in college, leaving one-night hook-ups in my wake. But I remember that she and I talked longer than any other girl I met that night. Moreover, when we got on the bus to take us back to school, I stopped her in the aisle and told her that she should come visit my dorm room sometime - not in any lascivious way, just a friendly way. I don't know what inspired me to say it to her, but I certainly didn't expect her to take me up on it. At the end of that night, I didn't feel like the slick ladies man I was hoping to be, I felt more dorky, rejected, and lonely than ever before. But she did stop by the next day. We walked up to campus, checked our mailboxes. From there, the friendship grew to what it is. Still, I don't remember meeting her. I just know we talked. I have no memory of being introduced, shaking hands, the panic of remembering someone's name throughout the first conversation with them. I just feel like I've always known her, that she and I have always been talking, dancing, laughing together. And it's that feeling of always having known her that makes me want more than anything in the world to always know her, and that's why on Sunday, April 10, 2005 I asked her to marry me.