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How I Met My Wife I

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HOW I MET MY WIFE I was on my way back to Chicago from Vietnam, where I had been a war correspondent attached to the First Marine Division at DaNang. I had lived for a while in Australia, spent a week in New Zealand, and now I was in the airport at Auckland. I had gone up on the walkaway above the waiting room. Looking over the crowd of travelers, a beautiful tall redhead appeared with orange curls, very elegant in her best traveling clothes. Mmmm. She was something like Deborah Kerr in AN AFFAIR TO REMEMBER with Cary Grant, but with a long Viking face. I made my way downstairs and inserted myself into her path, saying, "Hello." I was a rough, common-looking character in blue jeans, and her nose was in the air. She sniffed,"Hello," back, but she didn 't notice me at all. I was quite beneath her line of vision. We were on the same plane to Tahiti, but I didn 't get to speak to her again. In Tahiti, I met up with a tennis pro who was on a world tour and we hung out. And then one night I ran into the redhead again, in a hotel lounge. She was with a Swiss fellow I had also met--and I was to learn later that he had warned her not to have anything to do with me, that I looked disreputable. But anyway I asked her to dance. There was beautiful music playing and the Polynesian waves were hitting the shore under a bright moon, palm trees waving in the breeze. She turned me down. So I asked again. She turned me down again. The third time I asked her, she danced with me. And after

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