I met Jenny in college, of course. Most people meet their spouses in college and I was no exception. I used to have lunch every day at The Cage, in the quad just outside the engineering building. It was communal seating, so I just plopped myself down on a bench and waited to see who would sit near me. Usually, it was one of my friends in the engineering department, but sometimes it was someone from "out there." "Out there" meant the north side of campus, where the art, music, and history majors were. We engineers tolerated the interlopers, but just barely.
One day, a very attractive girl sat right across from me. Blonde hair that curled in at the shoulders, fair skin that seemed to be without blemish, a slightly upturned nose, and dark eyes that held promise and mystery, at least to me. Oh, yeah, and a killer smile. Actually, it was the smile that struck me first. I smiled back at her as she sat down, looking at her quizzically. She noticed me staring but didn't say anything. I took a couple more bites of my hamburger, stabbed a french fry into my mouth, stared at her some more, then said "hmm."
She looked at me and said "hmm, what?"
I smiled. "I was just wondering," I said, "if you were an art, music, or history major. You seem to have an air of creativity about you. That probably means art, but I have read some history that's pretty creative, so I can't rule history out."
She frowned. "What makes you think I'm any of them?" she said.
"Pretty simple," I responded. "The only people who eat at The Cage are engineers and the north campus people. It's clear you're north campus, so it has to be art, music, or history." I was rather proud of my logic.
"And how do you know I'm not an engineer?" she asked, with just a hint of a grin.
I laughed. "That's obvious," I said. "There's no way a girl as pretty as you would ever lower herself to be an engineer. I'm guessing it's art. Am I right?"
She smiled that killer smile of hers and said, "Nope, not even close. Guess again."
"Music, then. Flutist?" I guessed.
"Nope," she said. "That's two down. Try again."
"Okay, I think I've narrowed it down, then," I said. "You just don't look like a history major to me, that's all."
"Well," she said, "you may want to reexamine your assumptions."
"What assumptions have I made?" I asked. I couldn't think of any, besides assuming she was from this planet. Oh, maybe she wasn't a student. Hmm, that could be.
"You have eliminated a major based on a faulty assumption," she said.
My eyes got a bit wider at that. "You're an engineering major? No way."
"Way," she said. She held out her hand to me and said, "Jenny."
"Sam," I said, shaking her hand with disbelief. "How come I haven't seen you around? I'm pretty sure I would have noticed you before."
She shrugged. "I just transferred. I'm a junior now, but I'm not taking the normal junior classes, since I have already taken them. There are some other classes I'm taking to make up in some areas. How about you? What year are you?"
"I'm a junior, too," I said.
We chatted over a brief lunch. I found out she started out at a community college to save money. She didn't say so directly, but it seemed like her family didn't have a lot to spare. She lives with her mother, for now, but wants to move into a dorm or maybe an apartment. She said she would probably do better in school if she were out on her own. I told her about my family, which is only me and my mother and father. I'm an only child following in his father's footsteps to be an engineer. She said she took to engineering naturally, even though no one in her family ever went to college. I asked about her classes and how she liked them, then she asked about mine. We complained about the professors and the amount of work, but figured it wouldn't last that much longer before we were gainfully employed and making the big bucks. We laughed at the absurdity of that.
We finished our meals about the same time and cleaned up our area, tossing the napkins and containers into the trash. I told her it was nice to meet her and said I hoped I'd see her again. She said she liked meeting me, too, and echoed my hope to meet again. With that, we went our separate ways.
It was another week or two before I bumped into her again. I saw her sitting alone, more or less, at The Cage, so I sat down next to her. "Howdy, stranger," I said with a smile.
She looked up from her book. "Sam!" she said. "Long time, no see."
"Yeah," I said, "I've been pretty stealthy with my stalking. You probably haven't noticed me once, have you?"
She laughed. "Nope, not even once. You're pretty good at it." She smiled and tilted her head. I really liked the way she looked. "How are your classes so far?"
I winced. "Thermo sucks, but mechanics is okay. And quantum electrodynamics is pretty cool, although not what I expected. How about you?"
"Material sciences is about the only one I like so far. The professor is pretty good. He used to work in the industry, so he gives us insight into how it'll be when we graduate. It sounds like fun, but it also sounds like it can be a real pressure cooker."
"How so?" I asked.
"He says you're always working to a deadline and you're never given enough time to do a good job," she said. "There's never enough time to do it right, but always enough time to do it over, according to him. And the hours can get pretty long, if there is a delivery due or maybe some sort of design review with the customer. All in all, it's not quite what I expected the field to be like, so his insight is pretty helpful."
"Yeah," I said, "I'm guessing it'll never be what we expect, so I don't bother expecting anything. I'll take what comes. And if I don't like it, I'll climb on my motorcycle and be a bum."
"You have a motorcycle?" she asked, raising her eyebrows just a bit.
