It was meant to be!!!!!

In the Fall of 1996, I met this girl working the hot dog stand at a high school football game. I was going to the rival high school at the time and when I walked up I thought she was so beautiful that when she asked me what I would like, I said, "what do you ladies have?" I did this so I could hear her talk and just stare at her for just a few more minutes. Then I kindly asked for a hot cocoa still trying to get the nerve to ask her for her phone number. When she turned around and said, "one hot cocoa, MOM!" I was stuck. I didn't know what to do. I didn't want to ask her for her number in front of her Mom. So I did what at the time was the stupidest mistake, and I just took my hot cocoa and left, never to see her again....or at least I thought.

Let's fast forward to February of 2000. I meet this beautiful young woman at college. She is in the same play that I am in. It's called "The Time Of Your Life" by William Saroyan. We were talking and hanging out backstage and really hit it off. Then one day on March 8, 2000. This beautiful young woman, Heather, asked me to be her excuse to miss her English class. I told her I had to go shopping for shoes but she is more than welcome to come a long. After a day filled with shoe shopping, movies, and of course a grand dinner at the All-American restaurant........Jack in the Box, I had won her heart as she had mine. A few dates later I wore a blue bucket hat, that my Aunt Peach gave me that had the Hawaiian Islands on it, that was the same hat that I wore back at the hot dog stand. Heather, with her photogenic memory, looks at me and asks, "did you ever ask for a hot cocoa at the hot dog stand at Edison?" I looked right back at her and said, "THAT WAS YOU!!!!"

So here we are today, March 8, 2011. Heather and I have been together for 11 years, married for 6 this coming summer. And as I sit here writing this to you from the same exact place that I proposed to her on of course March 8, 2004. I must say that my Coach's RULE of the Day is to never count out fate for it is part of life. Never think something will or won't happen. Things happen for a reason. Sometimes they are good, like this one. Sometimes they are bad. But no matter what happens never give up on life or

fate. Each and everyone one of us is meant to walk a path. We may not know what that path is or where it is taking us. But we need to just lace up our shoes pull up our socks and get ready for this fantastic journey of life and fate.